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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76113 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                   The Horror in the Burying-Ground
+
+                            By HAZEL HEALD
+
+               _A bizarre and outré story of a gruesome
+              happening in the old town of Stillwater--a
+               blood-chilling tale of a double burial._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+                         Weird Tales May 1937.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+    Four years ago Hazel Heald made her bow to the readers of Weird
+    Tales with an eery story called "The Horror in the Museum," which
+    established her at once among the most popular writers of weird
+    fiction. She followed this with "Winged Death," a story of the
+    African tse-tse fly, and another tale of a weird monster from
+    "the dark backward and abysm of time." The story published here,
+    "The Horror in the Burying-Ground," is as weird and compelling as
+    anything this talented author has yet written. We recommend this
+    fascinating story to you, for we know you will not be disappointed
+    in it.
+
+
+When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travelers are forced to
+take the old Stillwater road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb
+in places, yet somehow the route has been unpopular for years. There
+is something depressing about it, especially near Stillwater itself.
+Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about the tightly shuttered
+farmhouse on the knoll just north of the village, and about the
+white-bearded half-wit who haunts the old burying-ground on the south,
+apparently talking to the occupants of some of the graves.
+
+Not much is left of Stillwater, now. The soil is played out, and most
+of the people have drifted to the towns across the distant river or to
+the city beyond the distant hills. The steeple of the old white church
+has fallen down, and half of the twenty-odd straggling houses are empty
+and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Peck's
+general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop
+now and then to ask about the shuttered house and the idiot who mutters
+to the dead.
+
+Most of the questioners come away with a touch of distaste and
+disquiet. They find the shabby loungers oddly unpleasant and full of
+unnamed hints in speaking of the long-past events brought up. There is
+a menacing, portentous quality in the tones which they use to describe
+very ordinary events--a seemingly unjustified tendency to assume
+a furtive, suggestive, confidential air, and to fall into awesome
+whispers at certain points--which insidiously disturbs the listener.
+Old Yankees often talk like that; but in this case the melancholy
+aspect of the half-moldering village, and the dismal nature of the
+story unfolded, give these gloomy, secretive mannerisms an added
+significance. One feels profoundly the quintessential horror that lurks
+behind the isolated Puritan and his strange repressions--feels it, and
+longs to escape precipitately into clearer air.
+
+The loungers whisper impressively that the shuttered house is that
+of old Miss Sprague--Sophie Sprague, whose brother Tom was buried
+on the seventeenth of June, back in '85. Sophie was never the same
+after that funeral--that and the other thing which happened the same
+day--and in the end she took to staying in all the time. Won't even be
+seen now, but leaves notes under the back-door mat and has her things
+brought from the store by Ned Peck's boy. Afraid of something--the old
+Swamp Hollow burying-ground most of all. Never could be dragged near
+there since her brother--and the other one--were laid away. Not much
+wonder, though, seeing the way crazy Johnny Dow rants. He hangs around
+the burying-ground all day and sometimes at night, and claims he talks
+with Tom--and the other. Then he marches by Sophie's house and shouts
+things at her--that's why she began to keep the shutters closed. He
+says things are coming from somewhere to get her sometime. Ought to
+be stopped, but one can't be too hard on poor Johnny. Besides, Steve
+Barbour always had his opinions.
+
+Johnny does his talking to two of the graves. One of them is Tom
+Sprague's. The other, at the opposite end of the graveyard, is that of
+Henry Thorndike, who was buried on the same day. Henry was the village
+undertaker--the only one in miles--and never liked around Stillwater.
+A city fellow from Rutland--been to college and full of book learning.
+Read queer things nobody else ever heard of, and mixed chemicals for no
+good purpose. Always trying to invent something new--some new-fangled
+embalming-fluid or some foolish kind of medicine. Some folks said he
+had tried to be a doctor but failed in his studies and took to the next
+best profession. Of course, there wasn't much undertaking to do in a
+place like Stillwater, but Henry farmed on the side.
+
+Mean, morbid disposition--and a secret drinker if you could judge by
+the empty bottles in his rubbish heap. No wonder Tom Sprague hated him
+and blackballed him from the Masonic lodge, and warned him off when
+he tried to make up to Sophie. The way he experimented on animals was
+against nature and Scripture. Who could forget the state that collie
+dog was found in, or what happened to old Mrs. Akeley's cat? Then there
+was the matter of Deacon Leavitt's calf, when Tom had led a band of
+the village boys to demand an accounting. The curious thing was that
+the calf came alive after all in the end, though Tom had found it as
+stiff as a poker. Some said the joke was on Tom, but Thorndike probably
+thought otherwise, since he had gone down under his enemy's fist before
+the mistake was discovered.
+
+Tom, of course, was half drunk at the time. He was a vicious brute
+at best, and kept his poor sister half cowed with threats. That's
+probably why she is such a fear-racked creature still. There were only
+the two of them, and Tom would never let her leave because that meant
+splitting the property. Most of the fellows were too afraid of him to
+shine up to Sophie--he stood six feet one in his stockings--but Henry
+Thorndike was a sly cuss who had ways of doing things behind folk's
+backs. He wasn't much to look at, but Sophie never discouraged him any.
+Mean and ugly as he was, she'd have been glad if anybody could have
+freed her from her brother. She may not have stopped to wonder how she
+could get clear of him after he got her clear of Tom.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Well, that was the way things stood in June of '86. Up to this point,
+the whisperers of the loungers at Peck's store are not so unbearably
+portentous; but as they continue, the element of secretiveness and
+malign tension grows. Tom Sprague, it appears, used to go to Rutland
+on periodic sprees, his absences being Henry Thorndike's great
+opportunities. He was always in bad shape when he got back, and old
+Doctor Pratt, deaf and half blind though he was, used to warn him about
+his heart, and about the danger of delirium tremens. Folks could always
+tell by the shouting and cursing when he was home again.
+
+It was on the ninth of June--on a Wednesday, the day after young Joshua
+Goodenough finished building his new-fangled silo--that Tom started out
+on his last and longest spree. He came back the next Tuesday morning,
+and folks at the store saw him lashing his bay stallion the way he did
+when whisky had a hold of him. Then there came shouts and shrieks and
+oaths from the Sprague house, and first thing anybody knew Sophie was
+running over to old Doctor Pratt's at top speed.
+
+The doctor found Thorndike at Sprague's when he got there, and Tom was
+on the bed in his room, with eyes staring and foam around his mouth.
+Old Pratt fumbled around and gave the usual tests, then shook his head
+solemnly and told Sophie she had suffered a great bereavement--that her
+nearest and dearest had passed through the pearly gates to a better
+land, just as everybody knew he would if he didn't let up on his
+drinking.
+
+Sophie kind of sniffled, the loungers whisper, but didn't seem to
+take on much. Thorndike didn't do anything but smile--perhaps at the
+ironic fact that he, always an enemy, was now the only person who could
+be of any use to Thomas Sprague. He shouted something in old Doctor
+Pratt's half-good ear about the need of having the funeral early on
+account of Tom's condition. Drunks like that were always doubtful
+subjects, and any extra delay--with merely rural facilities--would
+entail consequences, visual and otherwise, hardly acceptable to
+the deceased's loving mourners. The doctor had muttered that Tom's
+alcoholic career ought to have embalmed him pretty well in advance, but
+Thorndike assured him to the contrary, at the same time boasting of
+his own skill, and of the superior methods he had devised through his
+experiments.
+
+It is here that the whispers of the loungers grow acutely disturbing.
+Up to this point the story is usually told by Ezra Davenport, or Luther
+Fry, if Ezra is laid up with chilblains, as he is apt to be in winter;
+but from now on old Calvin Wheeler takes up the thread, and his voice
+has a damnably insidious way of suggesting hidden horror. If Johnny Dow
+happens to be passing by there is always a pause, for Stillwater does
+not like to have Johnny talk too much with strangers.
+
+Calvin edges close to the traveler and sometimes seizes a coat-lapel
+with his gnarled, mottled hand while he half shuts his watery blue
+eyes.
+
+"Well, sir," he whispers, "Henry he went home an' got his undertaker's
+fixin's--crazy Johnny Dow lugged most of 'em, for he was always doin'
+chores for Henry--an' says as Doc Pratt an' crazy Johnny should help
+lay out the body. Doc always did say as how he thought Henry talked too
+much--a-boastin' what a fine workman he was, an' how lucky it was that
+Stillwater had a reg'lar undertaker instead of buryin' folks jest as
+they was, like they do over to Whitby.
+
+"'Suppose,' says he, 'some fellow was to be took with some of them
+paralyzin' cramps like you read about. How'd a body like it when they
+lowered him down and begun shovelin' the dirt back? How'd he like it
+when he was chokin' down there under the new headstone, scratchin' an'
+tearin' if he chanced to get back the power, but all the time knowin'
+it wasn't no use? No, sir, I tell you it's a blessin' Stillwater's got
+a smart doctor as knows when a man's dead and when he ain't, and a
+trained undertaker who can fix a corpse so he'll stay put without no
+trouble.'
+
+"That was the way Henry went on talkin', most like he was talkin' to
+poor Tom's remains; and old Doc Pratt he didn't like what he was able
+to catch of it, even though Henry did call him a smart doctor. Crazy
+Johnny kept watchin' of the corpse, and it didn't make it none too
+pleasant the way he'd slobber about things like, 'He ain't cold, Doc,'
+or 'I see his eyelids move,' or 'There's a hole in his arm jest like
+the ones I git when Henry gives me a syringe full of what makes me feel
+good.' Thorndike shut him up on that, though we all knowed he'd been
+givin' poor Johnny drugs. It's a wonder the poor fellow ever got clear
+of the habit.
+
+"But the worst thing, accordin' to the doctor, was the way the body
+jerked up when Henry begun to shoot it full of embalmin'-fluid. He'd
+been boastin' about what a fine new formula he'd got practisin' on
+cats and dogs, when all of a sudden Tom's corpse began to double up
+like it was alive and fixin' to wrassle. Land of Goshen, but Doc says
+he was scared stiff, though he knowed the way corpses act when the
+muscles begin to stiffen. Well, sir, the long and short of it is, that
+the corpse sat up an' grabbed a holt of Thorndike's syringe so that
+it got stuck in Henry hisself, an' give him as neat a dose of his own
+embalmin'-fluid as you'd wish to see. That got Henry pretty scared,
+though he yanked the point out and managed to get the body down again
+and shot full of the fluid. He kept measurin' more of the stuff out
+as though he wanted to be sure there was enough, and kept reassurin'
+himself as not much had got into him, but crazy Johnny begun singin'
+out, 'That's what you give Lige Hopkins's dog when it got all dead an'
+stiff an' then waked up agin. Now you're a-goin' to get dead an' stiff
+like Tom Sprague be! Remember it don't set to work till after a long
+spell if you don't get much.'
+
+"Sophie, she was downstairs with some of the neighbors--my wife
+Matildy, she that's dead an' gone this thirty year, was one of them.
+They were all tryin' to find out whether Thorndike was over when Tom
+came home, and whether findin' him there was what set poor Tom off.
+I may as well say as some folks thought it mighty funny that Sophie
+didn't carry on more, nor mind the way Thorndike had smiled. Not as
+anybody was hintin' that Henry helped Tom off with some of his queer
+cooked-up fluids and syringes, or that Sophie would keep still if she
+thought so--but you know how folks will guess behind a body's back.
+We all knowed the nigh crazy way Thorndike had hated Tom--not without
+reason, at that--and Emily Barbour says to my Matildy as how Henry was
+lucky to have ol' Doc Pratt right on the spot with a death certificate
+as didn't leave no doubt for nobody."
+
+When old Calvin gets to this point he usually begins to mumble
+indistinguishably in his straggling, dirty white beard. Most listeners
+try to edge away from him, and he seldom appears to heed the gesture.
+It is generally Fred Peck, who was a very small boy at the time of the
+events, who continues the tale.
+
+Thomas Sprague's funeral was held on Thursday, June seventeenth, only
+two days after his death. Such haste was thought almost indecent in
+remote and inaccessible Stillwater, where long distances had to be
+covered by those who came, but Thorndike had insisted that the peculiar
+condition of the deceased demanded it. The undertaker had seemed
+rather nervous since preparing the body, and could be seen frequently
+feeling his pulse. Old Doctor Pratt thought he must be worrying about
+the accidental dose of embalming-fluid. Naturally, the story of the
+"laying out" had spread, so that a double zest animated the mourners
+who assembled to glut their curiosity and morbid interest.
+
+Thorndike, though he was obviously upset, seemed intent on doing his
+professional duty in magnificent style. Sophie and others who saw the
+body were most startled by its utter lifelikeness, and the mortuary
+virtuoso made doubly sure of his job by repeating certain injections at
+stated intervals. He almost wrung a sort of reluctant admiration from
+the town-folk and visitors, though he tended to spoil that impression
+by his boastful and tasteless talk. Whenever he administered to his
+silent charge he would repeat that eternal rambling about the good luck
+of having a first-class undertaker. What--he would say as if directly
+addressing the body--if Tom had had one of those careless fellows
+who bury their subjects alive? The way he harped on the horrors of
+premature burial was truly barbarous and sickening.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Services were held in the stuffy best room--opened for the first time
+since Mrs. Sprague died. The tuneless little parlor organ groaned
+disconsolately, and the coffin, supported on trestles near the hall
+door, was covered with sickly-smelling flowers. It was obvious that
+a record-breaking crowd was assembling from far and near, and Sophie
+endeavored to look properly grief-stricken for their benefit. At
+unguarded moments she seemed both puzzled and uneasy, dividing her
+scrutiny between the feverish-looking undertaker and the life-like body
+of her brother. A slow disgust at Thorndike seemed to be brewing within
+her, and neighbors whispered freely that she would soon send him about
+his business now that Tom was out of the way--that is, if she could,
+for such a slick customer was sometimes hard to deal with. But with her
+money and remaining looks she might be able to get another fellow, and
+he'd probably take care of Henry well enough.
+
+As the organ wheezed into _Beautiful Isle of Somewhere_ the Methodist
+church choir added their lugubrious voices to the gruesome cacophony,
+and everyone looked piously at Deacon Leavitt--everyone, that is,
+except crazy Johnny Dow, who kept his eyes glued to the still form
+beneath the glass of the coffin. He was muttering softly to himself.
+
+Stephen Barbour--from the next farm--was the only one who noticed
+Johnny. He shivered as he saw that the idiot was talking directly to
+the corpse, and even making foolish signs with his fingers as if to
+taunt the sleeper beneath the plate glass. Tom, he reflected, had
+kicked poor Johnny around on more than one occasion, though probably
+not without provocation. Something about this whole event was getting
+on Stephen's nerves. There was a suppressed tension and brooding
+abnormality in the air for which he could not account. Johnny ought not
+to have been allowed in the house--and it was curious what an effort
+Thorndike seemed to be making to look at the body. Every now and then
+the undertaker would feel his pulse with an odd air.
+
+The Reverend Silas Atwood droned on in a plaintive monotone about the
+deceased--about the striking of Death's sword in the midst of this
+little family, breaking the earthly tie between this loving brother and
+sister. Several of the neighbors looked furtively at one another from
+beneath lowered eyelids, while Sophie actually began to sob nervously.
+Thorndike moved to her side and tried to reassure her, but she seemed
+to shrink curiously away from him. His motions were distinctly uneasy,
+and he seemed to feel acutely the abnormal tension permeating the air.
+Finally, conscious of his duty as master of ceremonies, he stepped
+forward and announced in a sepulchral voice that the body might be
+viewed for the last time.
+
+Slowly the friends and neighbors filed past the bier, from which
+Thorndike roughly dragged crazy Johnny away. Tom seemed to be resting
+peacefully. That devil had been handsome in his day. A few genuine
+sobs--and many feigned ones--were heard, though most of the crowd
+were content to stare curiously and whisper afterward. Steve Barbour
+lingered long and attentively over the still face, and moved away
+shaking his head. His wife, Emily, following after him, whispered that
+Henry Thorndike had better not boast so much about his work, for Tom's
+eyes had come open. They had been shut when the services began, for she
+had been up and looked. But they certainly looked natural--not the way
+one would expect after two days.
+
+When Fred Peck gets this far he usually pauses as if he did not like to
+continue. The listener, too, tends to feel that something unpleasant
+is ahead. But Peck reassures his audience with the statement that what
+happened isn't as bad as folks like to hint. Even Steve never put into
+words what he may have thought, and crazy Johnny, of course, can't be
+counted at all.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Luella Morse--the nervous old maid who sang in the choir--who
+seems to have touched things off. She was filing past the coffin like
+the rest, but stopped to peer a little closer than anyone else except
+the Barbours had peered. And then, without warning, she gave a shrill
+scream and fell in a dead faint.
+
+Naturally, the room was at once a chaos of confusion. Old Doctor Pratt
+elbowed his way to Luella and called for some water to throw in her
+face, and others surged up to look at her and at the coffin. Johnny Dow
+began chanting to himself, "He knows, he knows, he kin hear all we're
+a-sayin' and see all we're a-doin', and they'll bury him that way"--but
+no one stopped to decipher his mumbling except Steve Barbour.
+
+In a very few moments Luella began to come out of her faint, and could
+not tell exactly what had startled her. All she could whisper was, "The
+way he looked--the way he looked." But to other eyes the body seemed
+exactly the same. It was a gruesome sight, though, with those open eyes
+and that high coloring.
+
+And then the bewildered crowd noticed something which put both Luella
+and the body out of their minds for a moment. It was Thorndike--on
+whom the sudden excitement and jostling crowd seemed to be having
+a curiously bad effect. He had evidently been knocked down in the
+general bustle, and was on the floor trying to drag himself to a
+sitting posture. The expression on his face was terrifying in the
+extreme, and his eyes were beginning to take on a glazed, fishy
+expression. He could scarcely speak aloud, but the husky rattle of his
+throat held an ineffable desperation which was obvious to all.
+
+"Get me home, quick, and let me be. That fluid I got in my arm by
+mistake ... heart action ... this damned excitement ... too much ...
+wait ... wait ... don't think I'm dead if I seem to ... only the
+fluid--just get me home and wait ... I'll come to later, don't know how
+long ... all the time I'll be conscious and know what's going on ...
+don't be deceived...."
+
+As his words trailed off into nothingness old Doctor Pratt reached him
+and felt his pulse--watching a long time and finally shaking his head.
+"No use doing anything--he's gone. Heart no good--and that fluid he got
+in his arm must have been bad stuff. I don't know what it is."
+
+A kind of numbness seemed to fall on all the company. New death in the
+chamber of death! Only Steve Barbour thought to bring up Thorndike's
+last choking words. Was he surely dead, when he himself had said he
+might falsely seem so? Wouldn't it be better to wait awhile and see
+what would happen? And for that matter, what harm would it do if Doc
+Pratt were to give Tom Sprague another looking over before burial?
+
+Crazy Johnny was moaning, and had flung himself on Thorndike's body
+like a faithful dog. "Don't ye bury him, don't ye bury him! He ain't
+dead no more not Lige Hopkins's dog nor Deacon Leavitt's calf was when
+he shot 'em full. He's got some stuff he puts into ye to make ye seem
+like dead when ye ain't! Ye seem like dead but ye know everything
+what's a-goin' on, and the next day ye come to as good as ever. Don't
+ye bury him--he'll come to under the earth an' he can't scratch up!
+He's a good man, an' not like Tom Sprague. Hope to Gawd Tom scratches
+an' chokes for hours an' hours...."
+
+But no one save Barbour was paying any attention to poor Johnny.
+Indeed, what Steve himself had said had evidently fallen on deaf ears.
+Uncertainty was everywhere. Old Doc Pratt was applying final tests and
+mumbling about death certificate blanks, and unctuous Elder Atwood
+was suggesting that something be done about a double interment. With
+Thorndike dead there was no undertaker this side of Rutland, and it
+would mean a terrible expense if one were to be brought from there,
+and if Thorndike were not embalmed in this hot June weather--well,
+one couldn't tell. And there were no relatives or friends to be too
+critical unless Sophie chose to be--but Sophie was on the other side
+of the room, staring silently, fixedly and almost morbidly into her
+brother's coffin.
+
+Deacon Leavitt tried to restore a semblance of decorum, and had poor
+Thorndike carried across the hall to the sitting-room, meanwhile
+sending Zenas Wells and Walter Perkins over to the undertaker's house
+for a coffin of the right size. The key was in Henry's trousers pocket.
+Johnny continued to whine and paw at the body, and Elder Atwood busied
+himself with inquiring about Thorndike's denomination--for Henry had
+not attended local services. When it was decided that his folks in
+Rutland--all dead now--had been Baptists, the Reverend Silas decided
+that Deacon Leavitt had better offer the brief prayer.
+
+It was a gala day for the funeral-fanciers of Stillwater and vicinity.
+Even Luella had recovered enough to stay. Gossip, murmured and
+whispered, buzzed busily while a few composing touches were given to
+Thorndike's cooling, stiffening form. Johnny had been cuffed out of the
+house, as most agreed he should have been in the first place, but his
+distant howls were now and then wafted gruesomely in.
+
+When the body was encoffined and laid out beside that of Thomas
+Sprague, the silent, almost frightening-looking Sophie gazed intently
+at it as she had gazed at her brother's. She had not uttered a word for
+a dangerously long time, and the mixed expression on her face was past
+all describing or interpreting. As the others withdrew to leave her
+alone with the dead she managed to find a sort of mechanical speech,
+but no one could make out the words, and she seemed to be talking first
+to one body and then the other.
+
+And now, with what would seem to an outsider the acme of gruesome
+unconscious comedy, the whole funeral mummery of the afternoon was
+listlessly repeated. Again the organ wheezed, again the choir screeched
+and scraped, again a droning incantation arose, and again the morbidly
+curious spectators filed past a macabre object--this time a dual array
+of mortuary repose. Same of the more sensitive people shivered at the
+whole proceeding, and again Stephen Barbour felt an underlying note of
+eldritch horror and demoniac abnormality. God, how life-like both of
+those corpses were ... and how in earnest poor Thorndike had been about
+not wanting to be judged dead ... and how he had hated Tom Sprague ...
+but what could one do in the face of common sense--a dead man was a
+dead man, and there was old Doc Pratt with his years of experience ...
+if nobody else bothered, why should one bother oneself?... Whatever Tom
+had got he had probably deserved ... and if Henry had done anything to
+him, the score was even now ... well, Sophie was free at last....
+
+As the peering procession moved at last toward the hall and the outer
+door, Sophie was alone with the dead once more. Elder Atwood was out
+in the road talking to the hearse-driver from Lee's livery stable,
+and Deacon Leavitt was arranging for a double quota of pall-bearers.
+Luckily the hearse would hold two coffins. No hurry--Ed Plummer and
+Ethan Stone were going ahead with shovels to dig the second grave.
+There would be three livery hacks and any number of private rigs in the
+cavalcade--no use trying to keep the crowd away from the graves.
+
+Then came that frantic scream from the parlor where Sophie and the
+bodies were. Its suddenness almost paralyzed the crowd and brought back
+the same sensation which had surged up when Luella had screamed and
+fainted. Steve Barbour and Deacon Leavitt started to go in, but before
+they could enter the house Sophie was bursting forth, sobbing and
+gasping about "That face at the window!... that face at the window!..."
+
+At the same time a wild-eyed figure rounded the corner of the house,
+removing all mystery from Sophie's dramatic cry. It was, very
+obviously, the face's owner--poor crazy Johnny, who began to leap up
+and down, pointing at Sophie and shrieking, "She knows! She knows!
+I seen it in her face when she looked at 'em and talked to 'em! She
+knows, and she's a-lettin' 'em go down in the earth to scratch an' claw
+for air.... But they'll talk to her so's she kin hear 'em ... they'll
+talk to her, an' appear to her ... and some day they'll come back an'
+git her!"
+
+Zenas Wells dragged the shrieking half-wit to a woodshed behind the
+house and bolted him in as best he could. His screams and poundings
+could be heard at a distance, but nobody paid him any further
+attention. The procession was made up, and with Sophie in the first
+hack it slowly covered the short distance past the village to the Swamp
+Hollow burying-ground.
+
+Elder Atwood made appropriate remarks as Thomas Sprague was laid
+to rest, and by the time he was through, Ed and Ethan had finished
+Thorndike's grave on the other side of the cemetery--to which the crowd
+presently shifted. Deacon Leavitt then spoke ornamentally, and the
+lowering process was repeated. People had begun to drift off in knots,
+and the clatter of receding buggies and carry-alls was quite universal,
+when the shovels began to fly again. As the earth thudded down on
+the coffin-lids, Thorndike's first, Steve Barbour noticed the queer
+expressions flitting over Sophie Sprague's face. He couldn't keep track
+of them all, but behind the rest there seemed to lurk a sort of wry,
+perverse, half-suppressed look of vague triumph. He shook his head.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Zenas had run back and let crazy Johnny out of the woodshed before
+Sophie got home, and the poor fellow at once made frantically for
+the graveyard. He arrived before the shovelmen were through, and
+while many of the curious mourners were still lingering about. What
+he shouted into Tom Sprague's partly-filled grave, and how he clawed
+at the loose earth of Thorndike's freshly-finished mound across the
+cemetery, surviving spectators still shudder to recall. Jotham Blake,
+the constable, had to take him back to the town farm by force, and his
+screams waked dreadful echoes.
+
+This is where Fred Peck usually leaves off the story. What more, he
+asks, is there to tell? It was a gloomy tragedy, and one can scarcely
+wonder that Sophie grew queer after that. That is all one hears if the
+hour is so late that old Calvin Wheeler has tottered home, but when he
+is still around he breaks in again with that damnably suggestive and
+insidious whisper. Sometimes those who hear him dread to pass either
+the shuttered house or the graveyard afterward, especially after dark.
+
+"Heh, heh ... Fred was only a little shaver then, and don't remember no
+more than half of what was goin' on! You want to know why Sophie keeps
+her house shuttered, and why crazy Johnny still keeps a-talkin' to the
+dead and a-shoutin' at Sophie's windows? Well, sir, I don't know's I
+know all there is to know, but I hear what I hear."
+
+Here the old man ejects his cud of tobacco and leans forward to
+buttonhole the listener.
+
+"It was that same night, mind ye--toward mornin', and just eight hours
+after them burials--when we heard the first scream from Sophie's house.
+Woke us all up--Steve and Emily Barbour and me and Matildy goes over
+hot-footin', all in night gear, and finds Sophie all dressed and dead
+fainted on the settin'-room floor. Lucky she hadn't locked her door.
+When we got her to she was shakin' like a leaf, and wouldn't let on by
+so much as a word what was ailin' her. Matildy and Emily done what they
+could to quiet her down, but Steve whispered things to me as didn't
+make me none too easy. Come about an hour when we allowed we'd be goin'
+home soon, that Sophie she begun to tip her head on one side like she
+was a-listenin' to somethin'. Then on a sudden she screamed again, and
+keeled over in another faint.
+
+"Well, sir, I'm tellin' what I'm tellin', and won't do no guessin' like
+Steve Barbour would a done if he dared. He always was the greatest
+hand for hintin' things ... died ten year ago of pneumony....
+
+"What we heard so faint-like was just poor crazy Johnny, of course.
+'Taint more than a mile to the buryin'-ground, and he must a got out
+of the window where they'd locked him up at the town farm--even if
+Constable Blake says he didn't get out that night. From that day to
+this he hangs around them graves a-talkin' to the both of them--cussin'
+and kickin' at Tom's mound, and puttin' posies and things on Henry's.
+And when he ain't a-doin' that he's hangin' around Sophie's shuttered
+windows howlin' about what's a-comin' some day to git her.
+
+"She wouldn't never go near the buryin'-ground, and now she won't come
+out of the house at all nor see nobody. Got to sayin' there was a
+curse on Stillwater--and I'm dinged if she ain't half right, the way
+things is a-goin' to pieces these days. There certainly was somethin'
+queer about Sophie right along. Once when Sally Hopkins was a-callin'
+on her--in '97 or '98, I think it was--there was an awful rattlin' at
+her winders--and Johnny was safe locked up at the time--at least, so
+Constable Dodge swore up and down. But I ain't takin' no stock in their
+stories about noises every seventeenth of June, or about faint shinin'
+figures a-tryin' Sophie's door and winders every black mornin' about
+two o'clock.
+
+"You see, it was about two o'clock in the mornin' that Sophie heard the
+sounds and keeled over twice that first night after the buryin'. Steve
+and me, and Matildy and Emily, heard the second lot, faint as it was,
+just like I told you. And I'm a-tellin' of you again as how it must a
+been crazy Johnny over to the buryin'-ground, let Jotham Blake claim
+what he will. There ain't no tellin' the sound of a man's voice so far
+off, and with our heads full of nonsense it ain't no wonder we thought
+there was two voices--and voices that hadn't ought to be speakin' at
+all.
+
+"Steve, he claimed to have heard more than I did. I verily believe he
+took some stock in ghosts. Matildy and Emily was so scared they didn't
+remember what they heard. And curious enough, nobody else in town--if
+anybody was awake at that ungodly hour--never said nothin' about
+hearin' no sounds at all.
+
+"Whatever it was, was so faint it might have been the wind if there
+hadn't been words. I made out a few, but don't want to say as I'd back
+up all Steve claimed to have caught....
+
+[Illustration: "Then there was that awful 'Comin' again some day,' in a
+death-like squawk."]
+
+"'She-devil' ... 'all the time' ... 'Henry' ... and 'alive' was
+plain ... and so was 'you know' ... 'said you'd stand by' ... 'get rid
+of him' and 'bury me' ... in a kind of changed voice.... Then there was
+that awful 'comin' again some day'--in a death-like squawk ... but you
+can't tell me Johnny couldn't have made those sounds....
+
+"Hey, you! What's takin' you off in such a hurry? Mebbe there's more I
+could tell you if I had a mind...."
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76113 ***
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+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76113 ***</div>
+
+<div class="titlepage">
+
+<h1>The Horror in the Burying-Ground</h1>
+
+<p class="ph1">By HAZEL HEALD</p>
+
+<p><i>A bizarre and outré story of a gruesome<br>
+happening in the old town of Stillwater—a<br>
+blood-chilling tale of a double burial.</i></p>
+
+<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br>
+Weird Tales May 1937.<br>
+Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br>
+the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot">
+
+<p>Four years ago Hazel Heald made her bow to the readers of Weird
+Tales with an eery story called "The Horror in the Museum," which
+established her at once among the most popular writers of weird
+fiction. She followed this with "Winged Death," a story of the African
+tse-tse fly, and another tale of a weird monster from "the dark
+backward and abysm of time." The story published here, "The Horror
+in the Burying-Ground," is as weird and compelling as anything this
+talented author has yet written. We recommend this fascinating story
+to you, for we know you will not be disappointed in it.</p>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<p>When the state highway to Rutland is closed, travelers are forced to
+take the old Stillwater road past Swamp Hollow. The scenery is superb
+in places, yet somehow the route has been unpopular for years. There
+is something depressing about it, especially near Stillwater itself.
+Motorists feel subtly uncomfortable about the tightly shuttered
+farmhouse on the knoll just north of the village, and about the
+white-bearded half-wit who haunts the old burying-ground on the south,
+apparently talking to the occupants of some of the graves.</p>
+
+<p>Not much is left of Stillwater, now. The soil is played out, and most
+of the people have drifted to the towns across the distant river or to
+the city beyond the distant hills. The steeple of the old white church
+has fallen down, and half of the twenty-odd straggling houses are empty
+and in various stages of decay. Normal life is found only around Peck's
+general store and filling-station, and it is here that the curious stop
+now and then to ask about the shuttered house and the idiot who mutters
+to the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the questioners come away with a touch of distaste and
+disquiet. They find the shabby loungers oddly unpleasant and full of
+unnamed hints in speaking of the long-past events brought up. There is
+a menacing, portentous quality in the tones which they use to describe
+very ordinary events—a seemingly unjustified tendency to assume
+a furtive, suggestive, confidential air, and to fall into awesome
+whispers at certain points—which insidiously disturbs the listener.
+Old Yankees often talk like that; but in this case the melancholy
+aspect of the half-moldering village, and the dismal nature of the
+story unfolded, give these gloomy, secretive mannerisms an added
+significance. One feels profoundly the quintessential horror that lurks
+behind the isolated Puritan and his strange repressions—feels it, and
+longs to escape precipitately into clearer air.</p>
+
+<p>The loungers whisper impressively that the shuttered house is that
+of old Miss Sprague—Sophie Sprague, whose brother Tom was buried
+on the seventeenth of June, back in '85. Sophie was never the same
+after that funeral—that and the other thing which happened the same
+day—and in the end she took to staying in all the time. Won't even be
+seen now, but leaves notes under the back-door mat and has her things
+brought from the store by Ned Peck's boy. Afraid of something—the old
+Swamp Hollow burying-ground most of all. Never could be dragged near
+there since her brother—and the other one—were laid away. Not much
+wonder, though, seeing the way crazy Johnny Dow rants. He hangs around
+the burying-ground all day and sometimes at night, and claims he talks
+with Tom—and the other. Then he marches by Sophie's house and shouts
+things at her—that's why she began to keep the shutters closed. He
+says things are coming from somewhere to get her sometime. Ought to
+be stopped, but one can't be too hard on poor Johnny. Besides, Steve
+Barbour always had his opinions.</p>
+
+<p>Johnny does his talking to two of the graves. One of them is Tom
+Sprague's. The other, at the opposite end of the graveyard, is that of
+Henry Thorndike, who was buried on the same day. Henry was the village
+undertaker—the only one in miles—and never liked around Stillwater.
+A city fellow from Rutland—been to college and full of book learning.
+Read queer things nobody else ever heard of, and mixed chemicals for no
+good purpose. Always trying to invent something new—some new-fangled
+embalming-fluid or some foolish kind of medicine. Some folks said he
+had tried to be a doctor but failed in his studies and took to the next
+best profession. Of course, there wasn't much undertaking to do in a
+place like Stillwater, but Henry farmed on the side.</p>
+
+<p>Mean, morbid disposition—and a secret drinker if you could judge by
+the empty bottles in his rubbish heap. No wonder Tom Sprague hated him
+and blackballed him from the Masonic lodge, and warned him off when
+he tried to make up to Sophie. The way he experimented on animals was
+against nature and Scripture. Who could forget the state that collie
+dog was found in, or what happened to old Mrs. Akeley's cat? Then there
+was the matter of Deacon Leavitt's calf, when Tom had led a band of
+the village boys to demand an accounting. The curious thing was that
+the calf came alive after all in the end, though Tom had found it as
+stiff as a poker. Some said the joke was on Tom, but Thorndike probably
+thought otherwise, since he had gone down under his enemy's fist before
+the mistake was discovered.</p>
+
+<p>Tom, of course, was half drunk at the time. He was a vicious brute
+at best, and kept his poor sister half cowed with threats. That's
+probably why she is such a fear-racked creature still. There were only
+the two of them, and Tom would never let her leave because that meant
+splitting the property. Most of the fellows were too afraid of him to
+shine up to Sophie—he stood six feet one in his stockings—but Henry
+Thorndike was a sly cuss who had ways of doing things behind folk's
+backs. He wasn't much to look at, but Sophie never discouraged him any.
+Mean and ugly as he was, she'd have been glad if anybody could have
+freed her from her brother. She may not have stopped to wonder how she
+could get clear of him after he got her clear of Tom.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Well, that was the way things stood in June of '86. Up to this point,
+the whisperers of the loungers at Peck's store are not so unbearably
+portentous; but as they continue, the element of secretiveness and
+malign tension grows. Tom Sprague, it appears, used to go to Rutland
+on periodic sprees, his absences being Henry Thorndike's great
+opportunities. He was always in bad shape when he got back, and old
+Doctor Pratt, deaf and half blind though he was, used to warn him about
+his heart, and about the danger of delirium tremens. Folks could always
+tell by the shouting and cursing when he was home again.</p>
+
+<p>It was on the ninth of June—on a Wednesday, the day after young Joshua
+Goodenough finished building his new-fangled silo—that Tom started out
+on his last and longest spree. He came back the next Tuesday morning,
+and folks at the store saw him lashing his bay stallion the way he did
+when whisky had a hold of him. Then there came shouts and shrieks and
+oaths from the Sprague house, and first thing anybody knew Sophie was
+running over to old Doctor Pratt's at top speed.</p>
+
+<p>The doctor found Thorndike at Sprague's when he got there, and Tom was
+on the bed in his room, with eyes staring and foam around his mouth.
+Old Pratt fumbled around and gave the usual tests, then shook his head
+solemnly and told Sophie she had suffered a great bereavement—that her
+nearest and dearest had passed through the pearly gates to a better
+land, just as everybody knew he would if he didn't let up on his
+drinking.</p>
+
+<p>Sophie kind of sniffled, the loungers whisper, but didn't seem to
+take on much. Thorndike didn't do anything but smile—perhaps at the
+ironic fact that he, always an enemy, was now the only person who could
+be of any use to Thomas Sprague. He shouted something in old Doctor
+Pratt's half-good ear about the need of having the funeral early on
+account of Tom's condition. Drunks like that were always doubtful
+subjects, and any extra delay—with merely rural facilities—would
+entail consequences, visual and otherwise, hardly acceptable to
+the deceased's loving mourners. The doctor had muttered that Tom's
+alcoholic career ought to have embalmed him pretty well in advance, but
+Thorndike assured him to the contrary, at the same time boasting of
+his own skill, and of the superior methods he had devised through his
+experiments.</p>
+
+<p>It is here that the whispers of the loungers grow acutely disturbing.
+Up to this point the story is usually told by Ezra Davenport, or Luther
+Fry, if Ezra is laid up with chilblains, as he is apt to be in winter;
+but from now on old Calvin Wheeler takes up the thread, and his voice
+has a damnably insidious way of suggesting hidden horror. If Johnny Dow
+happens to be passing by there is always a pause, for Stillwater does
+not like to have Johnny talk too much with strangers.</p>
+
+<p>Calvin edges close to the traveler and sometimes seizes a coat-lapel
+with his gnarled, mottled hand while he half shuts his watery blue
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir," he whispers, "Henry he went home an' got his undertaker's
+fixin's—crazy Johnny Dow lugged most of 'em, for he was always doin'
+chores for Henry—an' says as Doc Pratt an' crazy Johnny should help
+lay out the body. Doc always did say as how he thought Henry talked too
+much—a-boastin' what a fine workman he was, an' how lucky it was that
+Stillwater had a reg'lar undertaker instead of buryin' folks jest as
+they was, like they do over to Whitby.</p>
+
+<p>"'Suppose,' says he, 'some fellow was to be took with some of them
+paralyzin' cramps like you read about. How'd a body like it when they
+lowered him down and begun shovelin' the dirt back? How'd he like it
+when he was chokin' down there under the new headstone, scratchin' an'
+tearin' if he chanced to get back the power, but all the time knowin'
+it wasn't no use? No, sir, I tell you it's a blessin' Stillwater's got
+a smart doctor as knows when a man's dead and when he ain't, and a
+trained undertaker who can fix a corpse so he'll stay put without no
+trouble.'</p>
+
+<p>"That was the way Henry went on talkin', most like he was talkin' to
+poor Tom's remains; and old Doc Pratt he didn't like what he was able
+to catch of it, even though Henry did call him a smart doctor. Crazy
+Johnny kept watchin' of the corpse, and it didn't make it none too
+pleasant the way he'd slobber about things like, 'He ain't cold, Doc,'
+or 'I see his eyelids move,' or 'There's a hole in his arm jest like
+the ones I git when Henry gives me a syringe full of what makes me feel
+good.' Thorndike shut him up on that, though we all knowed he'd been
+givin' poor Johnny drugs. It's a wonder the poor fellow ever got clear
+of the habit.</p>
+
+<p>"But the worst thing, accordin' to the doctor, was the way the body
+jerked up when Henry begun to shoot it full of embalmin'-fluid. He'd
+been boastin' about what a fine new formula he'd got practisin' on
+cats and dogs, when all of a sudden Tom's corpse began to double up
+like it was alive and fixin' to wrassle. Land of Goshen, but Doc says
+he was scared stiff, though he knowed the way corpses act when the
+muscles begin to stiffen. Well, sir, the long and short of it is, that
+the corpse sat up an' grabbed a holt of Thorndike's syringe so that
+it got stuck in Henry hisself, an' give him as neat a dose of his own
+embalmin'-fluid as you'd wish to see. That got Henry pretty scared,
+though he yanked the point out and managed to get the body down again
+and shot full of the fluid. He kept measurin' more of the stuff out
+as though he wanted to be sure there was enough, and kept reassurin'
+himself as not much had got into him, but crazy Johnny begun singin'
+out, 'That's what you give Lige Hopkins's dog when it got all dead an'
+stiff an' then waked up agin. Now you're a-goin' to get dead an' stiff
+like Tom Sprague be! Remember it don't set to work till after a long
+spell if you don't get much.'</p>
+
+<p>"Sophie, she was downstairs with some of the neighbors—my wife
+Matildy, she that's dead an' gone this thirty year, was one of them.
+They were all tryin' to find out whether Thorndike was over when Tom
+came home, and whether findin' him there was what set poor Tom off.
+I may as well say as some folks thought it mighty funny that Sophie
+didn't carry on more, nor mind the way Thorndike had smiled. Not as
+anybody was hintin' that Henry helped Tom off with some of his queer
+cooked-up fluids and syringes, or that Sophie would keep still if she
+thought so—but you know how folks will guess behind a body's back.
+We all knowed the nigh crazy way Thorndike had hated Tom—not without
+reason, at that—and Emily Barbour says to my Matildy as how Henry was
+lucky to have ol' Doc Pratt right on the spot with a death certificate
+as didn't leave no doubt for nobody."</p>
+
+<p>When old Calvin gets to this point he usually begins to mumble
+indistinguishably in his straggling, dirty white beard. Most listeners
+try to edge away from him, and he seldom appears to heed the gesture.
+It is generally Fred Peck, who was a very small boy at the time of the
+events, who continues the tale.</p>
+
+<p>Thomas Sprague's funeral was held on Thursday, June seventeenth, only
+two days after his death. Such haste was thought almost indecent in
+remote and inaccessible Stillwater, where long distances had to be
+covered by those who came, but Thorndike had insisted that the peculiar
+condition of the deceased demanded it. The undertaker had seemed
+rather nervous since preparing the body, and could be seen frequently
+feeling his pulse. Old Doctor Pratt thought he must be worrying about
+the accidental dose of embalming-fluid. Naturally, the story of the
+"laying out" had spread, so that a double zest animated the mourners
+who assembled to glut their curiosity and morbid interest.</p>
+
+<p>Thorndike, though he was obviously upset, seemed intent on doing his
+professional duty in magnificent style. Sophie and others who saw the
+body were most startled by its utter lifelikeness, and the mortuary
+virtuoso made doubly sure of his job by repeating certain injections at
+stated intervals. He almost wrung a sort of reluctant admiration from
+the town-folk and visitors, though he tended to spoil that impression
+by his boastful and tasteless talk. Whenever he administered to his
+silent charge he would repeat that eternal rambling about the good luck
+of having a first-class undertaker. What—he would say as if directly
+addressing the body—if Tom had had one of those careless fellows
+who bury their subjects alive? The way he harped on the horrors of
+premature burial was truly barbarous and sickening.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Services were held in the stuffy best room—opened for the first time
+since Mrs. Sprague died. The tuneless little parlor organ groaned
+disconsolately, and the coffin, supported on trestles near the hall
+door, was covered with sickly-smelling flowers. It was obvious that
+a record-breaking crowd was assembling from far and near, and Sophie
+endeavored to look properly grief-stricken for their benefit. At
+unguarded moments she seemed both puzzled and uneasy, dividing her
+scrutiny between the feverish-looking undertaker and the life-like body
+of her brother. A slow disgust at Thorndike seemed to be brewing within
+her, and neighbors whispered freely that she would soon send him about
+his business now that Tom was out of the way—that is, if she could,
+for such a slick customer was sometimes hard to deal with. But with her
+money and remaining looks she might be able to get another fellow, and
+he'd probably take care of Henry well enough.</p>
+
+<p>As the organ wheezed into <i>Beautiful Isle of Somewhere</i> the Methodist
+church choir added their lugubrious voices to the gruesome cacophony,
+and everyone looked piously at Deacon Leavitt—everyone, that is,
+except crazy Johnny Dow, who kept his eyes glued to the still form
+beneath the glass of the coffin. He was muttering softly to himself.</p>
+
+<p>Stephen Barbour—from the next farm—was the only one who noticed
+Johnny. He shivered as he saw that the idiot was talking directly to
+the corpse, and even making foolish signs with his fingers as if to
+taunt the sleeper beneath the plate glass. Tom, he reflected, had
+kicked poor Johnny around on more than one occasion, though probably
+not without provocation. Something about this whole event was getting
+on Stephen's nerves. There was a suppressed tension and brooding
+abnormality in the air for which he could not account. Johnny ought not
+to have been allowed in the house—and it was curious what an effort
+Thorndike seemed to be making to look at the body. Every now and then
+the undertaker would feel his pulse with an odd air.</p>
+
+<p>The Reverend Silas Atwood droned on in a plaintive monotone about the
+deceased—about the striking of Death's sword in the midst of this
+little family, breaking the earthly tie between this loving brother and
+sister. Several of the neighbors looked furtively at one another from
+beneath lowered eyelids, while Sophie actually began to sob nervously.
+Thorndike moved to her side and tried to reassure her, but she seemed
+to shrink curiously away from him. His motions were distinctly uneasy,
+and he seemed to feel acutely the abnormal tension permeating the air.
+Finally, conscious of his duty as master of ceremonies, he stepped
+forward and announced in a sepulchral voice that the body might be
+viewed for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>Slowly the friends and neighbors filed past the bier, from which
+Thorndike roughly dragged crazy Johnny away. Tom seemed to be resting
+peacefully. That devil had been handsome in his day. A few genuine
+sobs—and many feigned ones—were heard, though most of the crowd
+were content to stare curiously and whisper afterward. Steve Barbour
+lingered long and attentively over the still face, and moved away
+shaking his head. His wife, Emily, following after him, whispered that
+Henry Thorndike had better not boast so much about his work, for Tom's
+eyes had come open. They had been shut when the services began, for she
+had been up and looked. But they certainly looked natural—not the way
+one would expect after two days.</p>
+
+<p>When Fred Peck gets this far he usually pauses as if he did not like to
+continue. The listener, too, tends to feel that something unpleasant
+is ahead. But Peck reassures his audience with the statement that what
+happened isn't as bad as folks like to hint. Even Steve never put into
+words what he may have thought, and crazy Johnny, of course, can't be
+counted at all.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>It was Luella Morse—the nervous old maid who sang in the choir—who
+seems to have touched things off. She was filing past the coffin like
+the rest, but stopped to peer a little closer than anyone else except
+the Barbours had peered. And then, without warning, she gave a shrill
+scream and fell in a dead faint.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally, the room was at once a chaos of confusion. Old Doctor Pratt
+elbowed his way to Luella and called for some water to throw in her
+face, and others surged up to look at her and at the coffin. Johnny Dow
+began chanting to himself, "He knows, he knows, he kin hear all we're
+a-sayin' and see all we're a-doin', and they'll bury him that way"—but
+no one stopped to decipher his mumbling except Steve Barbour.</p>
+
+<p>In a very few moments Luella began to come out of her faint, and could
+not tell exactly what had startled her. All she could whisper was, "The
+way he looked—the way he looked." But to other eyes the body seemed
+exactly the same. It was a gruesome sight, though, with those open eyes
+and that high coloring.</p>
+
+<p>And then the bewildered crowd noticed something which put both Luella
+and the body out of their minds for a moment. It was Thorndike—on
+whom the sudden excitement and jostling crowd seemed to be having
+a curiously bad effect. He had evidently been knocked down in the
+general bustle, and was on the floor trying to drag himself to a
+sitting posture. The expression on his face was terrifying in the
+extreme, and his eyes were beginning to take on a glazed, fishy
+expression. He could scarcely speak aloud, but the husky rattle of his
+throat held an ineffable desperation which was obvious to all.</p>
+
+<p>"Get me home, quick, and let me be. That fluid I got in my arm by
+mistake ... heart action ... this damned excitement ... too much ...
+wait ... wait ... don't think I'm dead if I seem to ... only the
+fluid—just get me home and wait ... I'll come to later, don't know how
+long ... all the time I'll be conscious and know what's going on ...
+don't be deceived...."</p>
+
+<p>As his words trailed off into nothingness old Doctor Pratt reached him
+and felt his pulse—watching a long time and finally shaking his head.
+"No use doing anything—he's gone. Heart no good—and that fluid he got
+in his arm must have been bad stuff. I don't know what it is."</p>
+
+<p>A kind of numbness seemed to fall on all the company. New death in the
+chamber of death! Only Steve Barbour thought to bring up Thorndike's
+last choking words. Was he surely dead, when he himself had said he
+might falsely seem so? Wouldn't it be better to wait awhile and see
+what would happen? And for that matter, what harm would it do if Doc
+Pratt were to give Tom Sprague another looking over before burial?</p>
+
+<p>Crazy Johnny was moaning, and had flung himself on Thorndike's body
+like a faithful dog. "Don't ye bury him, don't ye bury him! He ain't
+dead no more not Lige Hopkins's dog nor Deacon Leavitt's calf was when
+he shot 'em full. He's got some stuff he puts into ye to make ye seem
+like dead when ye ain't! Ye seem like dead but ye know everything
+what's a-goin' on, and the next day ye come to as good as ever. Don't
+ye bury him—he'll come to under the earth an' he can't scratch up!
+He's a good man, an' not like Tom Sprague. Hope to Gawd Tom scratches
+an' chokes for hours an' hours...."</p>
+
+<p>But no one save Barbour was paying any attention to poor Johnny.
+Indeed, what Steve himself had said had evidently fallen on deaf ears.
+Uncertainty was everywhere. Old Doc Pratt was applying final tests and
+mumbling about death certificate blanks, and unctuous Elder Atwood
+was suggesting that something be done about a double interment. With
+Thorndike dead there was no undertaker this side of Rutland, and it
+would mean a terrible expense if one were to be brought from there,
+and if Thorndike were not embalmed in this hot June weather—well,
+one couldn't tell. And there were no relatives or friends to be too
+critical unless Sophie chose to be—but Sophie was on the other side
+of the room, staring silently, fixedly and almost morbidly into her
+brother's coffin.</p>
+
+<p>Deacon Leavitt tried to restore a semblance of decorum, and had poor
+Thorndike carried across the hall to the sitting-room, meanwhile
+sending Zenas Wells and Walter Perkins over to the undertaker's house
+for a coffin of the right size. The key was in Henry's trousers pocket.
+Johnny continued to whine and paw at the body, and Elder Atwood busied
+himself with inquiring about Thorndike's denomination—for Henry had
+not attended local services. When it was decided that his folks in
+Rutland—all dead now—had been Baptists, the Reverend Silas decided
+that Deacon Leavitt had better offer the brief prayer.</p>
+
+<p>It was a gala day for the funeral-fanciers of Stillwater and vicinity.
+Even Luella had recovered enough to stay. Gossip, murmured and
+whispered, buzzed busily while a few composing touches were given to
+Thorndike's cooling, stiffening form. Johnny had been cuffed out of the
+house, as most agreed he should have been in the first place, but his
+distant howls were now and then wafted gruesomely in.</p>
+
+<p>When the body was encoffined and laid out beside that of Thomas
+Sprague, the silent, almost frightening-looking Sophie gazed intently
+at it as she had gazed at her brother's. She had not uttered a word for
+a dangerously long time, and the mixed expression on her face was past
+all describing or interpreting. As the others withdrew to leave her
+alone with the dead she managed to find a sort of mechanical speech,
+but no one could make out the words, and she seemed to be talking first
+to one body and then the other.</p>
+
+<p>And now, with what would seem to an outsider the acme of gruesome
+unconscious comedy, the whole funeral mummery of the afternoon was
+listlessly repeated. Again the organ wheezed, again the choir screeched
+and scraped, again a droning incantation arose, and again the morbidly
+curious spectators filed past a macabre object—this time a dual array
+of mortuary repose. Same of the more sensitive people shivered at the
+whole proceeding, and again Stephen Barbour felt an underlying note of
+eldritch horror and demoniac abnormality. God, how life-like both of
+those corpses were ... and how in earnest poor Thorndike had been about
+not wanting to be judged dead ... and how he had hated Tom Sprague ...
+but what could one do in the face of common sense—a dead man was a
+dead man, and there was old Doc Pratt with his years of experience ...
+if nobody else bothered, why should one bother oneself?... Whatever Tom
+had got he had probably deserved ... and if Henry had done anything to
+him, the score was even now ... well, Sophie was free at last....</p>
+
+<p>As the peering procession moved at last toward the hall and the outer
+door, Sophie was alone with the dead once more. Elder Atwood was out
+in the road talking to the hearse-driver from Lee's livery stable,
+and Deacon Leavitt was arranging for a double quota of pall-bearers.
+Luckily the hearse would hold two coffins. No hurry—Ed Plummer and
+Ethan Stone were going ahead with shovels to dig the second grave.
+There would be three livery hacks and any number of private rigs in the
+cavalcade—no use trying to keep the crowd away from the graves.</p>
+
+<p>Then came that frantic scream from the parlor where Sophie and the
+bodies were. Its suddenness almost paralyzed the crowd and brought back
+the same sensation which had surged up when Luella had screamed and
+fainted. Steve Barbour and Deacon Leavitt started to go in, but before
+they could enter the house Sophie was bursting forth, sobbing and
+gasping about "That face at the window!... that face at the window!..."</p>
+
+<p>At the same time a wild-eyed figure rounded the corner of the house,
+removing all mystery from Sophie's dramatic cry. It was, very
+obviously, the face's owner—poor crazy Johnny, who began to leap up
+and down, pointing at Sophie and shrieking, "She knows! She knows!
+I seen it in her face when she looked at 'em and talked to 'em! She
+knows, and she's a-lettin' 'em go down in the earth to scratch an' claw
+for air.... But they'll talk to her so's she kin hear 'em ... they'll
+talk to her, an' appear to her ... and some day they'll come back an'
+git her!"</p>
+
+<p>Zenas Wells dragged the shrieking half-wit to a woodshed behind the
+house and bolted him in as best he could. His screams and poundings
+could be heard at a distance, but nobody paid him any further
+attention. The procession was made up, and with Sophie in the first
+hack it slowly covered the short distance past the village to the Swamp
+Hollow burying-ground.</p>
+
+<p>Elder Atwood made appropriate remarks as Thomas Sprague was laid
+to rest, and by the time he was through, Ed and Ethan had finished
+Thorndike's grave on the other side of the cemetery—to which the crowd
+presently shifted. Deacon Leavitt then spoke ornamentally, and the
+lowering process was repeated. People had begun to drift off in knots,
+and the clatter of receding buggies and carry-alls was quite universal,
+when the shovels began to fly again. As the earth thudded down on
+the coffin-lids, Thorndike's first, Steve Barbour noticed the queer
+expressions flitting over Sophie Sprague's face. He couldn't keep track
+of them all, but behind the rest there seemed to lurk a sort of wry,
+perverse, half-suppressed look of vague triumph. He shook his head.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Zenas had run back and let crazy Johnny out of the woodshed before
+Sophie got home, and the poor fellow at once made frantically for
+the graveyard. He arrived before the shovelmen were through, and
+while many of the curious mourners were still lingering about. What
+he shouted into Tom Sprague's partly-filled grave, and how he clawed
+at the loose earth of Thorndike's freshly-finished mound across the
+cemetery, surviving spectators still shudder to recall. Jotham Blake,
+the constable, had to take him back to the town farm by force, and his
+screams waked dreadful echoes.</p>
+
+<p>This is where Fred Peck usually leaves off the story. What more, he
+asks, is there to tell? It was a gloomy tragedy, and one can scarcely
+wonder that Sophie grew queer after that. That is all one hears if the
+hour is so late that old Calvin Wheeler has tottered home, but when he
+is still around he breaks in again with that damnably suggestive and
+insidious whisper. Sometimes those who hear him dread to pass either
+the shuttered house or the graveyard afterward, especially after dark.</p>
+
+<p>"Heh, heh ... Fred was only a little shaver then, and don't remember no
+more than half of what was goin' on! You want to know why Sophie keeps
+her house shuttered, and why crazy Johnny still keeps a-talkin' to the
+dead and a-shoutin' at Sophie's windows? Well, sir, I don't know's I
+know all there is to know, but I hear what I hear."</p>
+
+<p>Here the old man ejects his cud of tobacco and leans forward to
+buttonhole the listener.</p>
+
+<p>"It was that same night, mind ye—toward mornin', and just eight hours
+after them burials—when we heard the first scream from Sophie's house.
+Woke us all up—Steve and Emily Barbour and me and Matildy goes over
+hot-footin', all in night gear, and finds Sophie all dressed and dead
+fainted on the settin'-room floor. Lucky she hadn't locked her door.
+When we got her to she was shakin' like a leaf, and wouldn't let on by
+so much as a word what was ailin' her. Matildy and Emily done what they
+could to quiet her down, but Steve whispered things to me as didn't
+make me none too easy. Come about an hour when we allowed we'd be goin'
+home soon, that Sophie she begun to tip her head on one side like she
+was a-listenin' to somethin'. Then on a sudden she screamed again, and
+keeled over in another faint.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I'm tellin' what I'm tellin', and won't do no guessin' like
+Steve Barbour would a done if he dared. He always was the greatest
+hand for hintin' things ... died ten year ago of pneumony....</p>
+
+<p>"What we heard so faint-like was just poor crazy Johnny, of course.
+'Taint more than a mile to the buryin'-ground, and he must a got out
+of the window where they'd locked him up at the town farm—even if
+Constable Blake says he didn't get out that night. From that day to
+this he hangs around them graves a-talkin' to the both of them—cussin'
+and kickin' at Tom's mound, and puttin' posies and things on Henry's.
+And when he ain't a-doin' that he's hangin' around Sophie's shuttered
+windows howlin' about what's a-comin' some day to git her.</p>
+
+<p>"She wouldn't never go near the buryin'-ground, and now she won't come
+out of the house at all nor see nobody. Got to sayin' there was a
+curse on Stillwater—and I'm dinged if she ain't half right, the way
+things is a-goin' to pieces these days. There certainly was somethin'
+queer about Sophie right along. Once when Sally Hopkins was a-callin'
+on her—in '97 or '98, I think it was—there was an awful rattlin' at
+her winders—and Johnny was safe locked up at the time—at least, so
+Constable Dodge swore up and down. But I ain't takin' no stock in their
+stories about noises every seventeenth of June, or about faint shinin'
+figures a-tryin' Sophie's door and winders every black mornin' about
+two o'clock.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, it was about two o'clock in the mornin' that Sophie heard the
+sounds and keeled over twice that first night after the buryin'. Steve
+and me, and Matildy and Emily, heard the second lot, faint as it was,
+just like I told you. And I'm a-tellin' of you again as how it must a
+been crazy Johnny over to the buryin'-ground, let Jotham Blake claim
+what he will. There ain't no tellin' the sound of a man's voice so far
+off, and with our heads full of nonsense it ain't no wonder we thought
+there was two voices—and voices that hadn't ought to be speakin' at
+all.</p>
+
+<p>"Steve, he claimed to have heard more than I did. I verily believe he
+took some stock in ghosts. Matildy and Emily was so scared they didn't
+remember what they heard. And curious enough, nobody else in town—if
+anybody was awake at that ungodly hour—never said nothin' about
+hearin' no sounds at all.</p>
+
+<p>"Whatever it was, was so faint it might have been the wind if there
+hadn't been words. I made out a few, but don't want to say as I'd back
+up all Steve claimed to have caught....</p>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<div class="figcenter">
+  <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt="">
+  <div class="caption">
+    <p>"Then there was that awful 'Comin' again some day,' in a death-like squawk."</p>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap">
+
+<p>"'She-devil' ... 'all the time' ... 'Henry' ... and 'alive' was
+plain ... and so was 'you know' ... 'said you'd stand by' ... 'get rid
+of him' and 'bury me' ... in a kind of changed voice.... Then there was
+that awful 'comin' again some day'—in a death-like squawk ... but you
+can't tell me Johnny couldn't have made those sounds....</p>
+
+<p>"Hey, you! What's takin' you off in such a hurry? Mebbe there's more I
+could tell you if I had a mind...."
+</p>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 76113 ***</div>
+</body>
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+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+book #76113 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76113)