LITMIR.BIZ

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already trying to start trouble. By blaming the murder of your daughter on Eula Starko, you’re hoping to stir up a lot of ill will toward the hospital because we harbored her, as you call it. Well, I can put a stop to that. I’ve already told you that Eula died at four o’clock this afternoon. You say you found your girl later tonight—still warm. Dead people don’t commit murders.”

      “Witch-vampires kin. Because they don’t die. Not really.”

      “That’s crazy talk!” Croft snapped. He was growing tired of this superstitious palaver, this sinister harping on witches and vampires. Another ten or fifteen minutes of it and he’d be getting jittery himself. He stood upright. “Eula’s body is still in the hospital building where I left her when she died. I couldn’t make any arrangements for removing her corpse on account of the storm. Now come with me, all of you. I’ll prove what I’m saying.”

      Muttering, the Ludwells permitted themselves to be herded out into the rain. Brenda Lemoyne kept very close to Tim Croft, while Jeb Starko trailed along behind. They crossed the clearing to the hospital building, a low, one-story structure of hewn logs, just large enough to accommodate four beds, a surgery and a dispensary. Croft opened the front door, waved the others in, and made a light.

      Brenda Lemoyne’s hand flew to her mouth. “Tim!” she gasped. Her frightened gaze went to the mussed bed where Jeb Starko’s lovely young wife had reposed in death’s stillness. “Her body—it’s gone, Tim! Gone!”

      It was true. The bed was empty. Cold sweat formed on Tim Croft’s palms, and he stifled the startled oath that leaped to his lips as he stared about the room. For a dead woman to vanish, to disappear into thin air of her own volition, was obviously impossible. Yet, apparently, that was what had happened.

      “Eula! My Eula!” Jeb Starko strangled. He wheeled to face the scowling Ludwell clan. “You-all took her, damn your souls to hell! One of you came here an’ stole her away while the rest was a-talkin’ to Doc Croft! You—you—”

      He would have leaped to attack the five burly clansmen, but Tim Croft grabbed him, pinioned him and fought him to calmness. And then Lige Ludwell, prowling toward the far end of the room, emitted a sudden roaring yell of triumph. “Come an’ look at this!” he shouted. “I reckon you’ll believe me now when I say Eula Starko is a witch-vampire!”

      Everyone raced to the door through which Lige pointed, with the doctor in the lead. At the threshold, Croft froze in horror. “God in heaven!” he whispered as he stared into the surgery; and then he tried to shield the gruesome sight from Brenda Lemoyne.

      In the little white-walled room, the missing night-nurse, Edith Paxon, hung suspended upside down and naked from an overhead rafter, her curvesome body swaying gently, like a pendulum, and her flesh a horrible fish-belly white. Exactly like the wounds on the throat of Lige Ludwell’s daughter, there were a series of sharp incisions over Edith Paxon’s jugular, and ruby rivulets ran down from the punctures to drip slowly on the floor. But the flow of blood had almost ceased; and that was a strange thing, because in spite of the obvious fact that the nurse’s veins had been completely drained, there was practically no blood on the floor beneath her head. Just a few spattered drops, and that was all!

      Brenda Lemoyne trembled against Tim Croft. “Darling…can it be true? Did Eula Starko come back from death to drink Edith’s blood… ?”

      “No!” he rasped. “It’s not so! It can’t be!” He grabbed for a stethoscope, jammed it against the slain nurse’s heart and could find no trace of pulse-beat. “She’s dead,” he announced grimly. “And I’m going down to report this to the sheriff! Come on, Brenda. We’re getting out of here. Don’t you Ludwells touch anything,” he warned.

      “You needn’t worry,” Lige Ludwell retorted. “We-uns air a-goin’ out to hunt the witch-vampire afore she does any more killin’. Follow me, boys.”

      Jeb Starko tried to block them. “I won’t let you do anything to Eula!” he cried. “Maybe she is what you-all say. But she’s my wife, an’ I hain’t a-goin’ to let you—” Lige struck him, knocked him staggering. “Shet up, you,” he growled ominously. Then he glared at Tim Croft and Brenda. “As for you two…well, your time’s a-comin’. If you-all hadn’t harbored the witch-vampire, none of this woulda happened.” He and his clan trooped out and vanished in the storm. Jeb Starko slunk after them like a whipped cur.

      Croft took Brenda’s arm. “I hope the car will run,” he said slowly. “Something tells me we haven’t seen the last of this business tonight.” He led her toward the lean-to garage where he kept his rattletrap roadster.

      She crouched close to him in the car, as if seeking the protection of his hard body. “Tim…I’m frightened. Do you think there could be such a thing as—what the Ludwells claim?”

      “No. Of course not.” Secretly he wasn’t so sure. All his knowledge, all his scientific and medical training, rebelled against the belief that a dead woman could have arisen from her bed to kill two young girls and drink their blood. And yet—how else could it have happened? Who else could have been responsible? And where had Eula Starko’s corpse gone?

      “Tim!” Brenda faltered. “After we go to the village and report these th-things to the sheriff, let’s not come back here tonight. Please!”

      “All right,” he patted her cheek. “We won’t come back until daylight, my dear.” He stepped on the starter, and the motor responded with a heartening clatter. He headed for the muddy, deep-rutted road; saw no trace of the Ludwells. It was as if the night had opened up and swallowed them.

      He drove in silence—until suddenly he felt the front wheels bogging down in an unexpected morass of red gumbo. “Damn!” he muttered as he gunned the engine. The little roadster slewed sidewise, settled deeper. And there it stuck.

      “Guess I’ll have to deflate the rear tires for traction,” he said sourly. He scrambled out, his feet sinking into the mire. He leaned over a back wheel, feeling for the valve—

      Something leaped at him from the surrounding darkness, and a bludgeoning blow took him over the skull. Blinding lights cascaded through his brain, and he felt himself falling. As if from some other world, he heard Brenda shrilly screaming. He tried to right himself, to go to her aid. But smothering blackness swooped down on him, enfolded him. He toppled into the mud and lay there, unconscious.

      * * * *

      How long it was before he regained his senses, he had no way of knowing. But when at last he staggered drunkenly to his feet, he was quite alone. Brenda Lemoyne wasn’t in the roadster. There was no trace of her anywhere. “Brenda!” he shouted thickly. “Brenda!”

      She didn’t answer. He heard only the soughing of the wind, the hissing pelt of raindrops in the scrub oak. Sickened fear assailed him, then; fear, not for himself but for the girl he loved. He remembered the dark, sinister threats uttered by Lige Ludwell, and he recalled how Lige’s daughter had died; how Edith Paxon had died. Maybe Brenda was even now hanging suspended head-downward somewhere, her life-blood being drained from her veins, either by vengeful clansmen or by something worse…such as an undead vampire-corpse…

      Until tonight, he would have scoffed at such an eldritch, hellish fancy. But in view of what had already happened, a cold slime of horror slid into his marrow when he considered the possibility that the Ludwells had been right in accusing Eula Starko of vampirism. And while his reason rejected such an idea as fantastically impossible, his instinct compelled him to find out for himself; to learn the truth, one way or another. He started running through the storm.

      The ridge lay to his left, and a tortuous footpath traversed it, precariously leading to the Starko cabin in Haunted Hollow. Up this treacherous path he stumbled, while branches flayed his face and snagged at his bathrobe and pajamas. Panting, winded, he presently gained the summit and started down, his feet slipping in the oozy muck. Then, dead ahead, he saw a light and realized that he had gained his destination. The Starko shack was before him.

      Silently he stole toward it; reached the uncurtained

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