Page:Weird Tales Volume 7 Number 3 (1926-03).djvu/117

now, he thought, between that shriveled thing and the girl he had loved. Little——

But the mummy was not in the casket as he had expected. It lay across the doorway, and sticking in the breast of it was a long, age-rusted knife!

Bennett felt terror rise once more within him. Sweat poured in ghastly beads from his forehead. With a cry he leapt from his position and toward the door, but one foot caught in the winding sheets of the mummy, and he stumbled and fell. A jagged rock tore an even more jagged gash in his head and blood streamed over his face. He rose to his feet. Out—out into the open! Away! Away!

When he was exhausted he fell, but ever he rose again and pushed on. Visions so hideous that they seared his soul crossed his fevered brain. Down through the centuries he had come, killing, only to be killed. Down through the centuries he would go, killing, but to be killed. Endless death in endless life: eternal horror! Through all the ages the curse of a dead woman had followed him. Always it would be there, for so it was written. He must die. He must die! Even the mummy, dead dozens of centuries, had moved in the tomb to prevent his escape when the walls had failed to crush him.

Bennett did not stop to reason. There was no logic left within him. He only knew that he must leave the mountains behind. And he lost all conception of time and space and reality as he ran on and on down the canyon.

The silence of the desert was over him, about him, as he staggered through the starlit night. It weighed down upon him. It was oppressive, all-powerful, maddening. The stars were glittering now like the points of infinitely terrible daggers. The moon was the color of blood—her blood, he thought.

He was alone. In all the vast universe nothing moved except the man. Alone! A lost soul alone in a lost land. Lost forever.

And then suddenly Bennett began to laugh. He laughed at the stars, the moon, the desert, the mountains. And as he laughed he ran. He had gone quite mad.