Then a cloud of darker depth
passed over the moon, and the silhouette of clutching branches faded
out momentarily. At this there was a general cry; muffled with awe,
but husky and almost identical from every throat. For the terror had
not faded with the silhouette, and in a fearsome instant of deeper
darkness the watchers saw wriggling at the treetop height a thousand
tiny points of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like
the fire of St. Elmo or the flames that come down on the apostles'
heads at Pentecost. It was a monstrous constellation of unnatural
light, like a glutted swarm of corpse-fed fireflies dancing hellish
sarabands over an accursed marsh; and its colour was that same nameless
intrusion which Ammi had come to recognise and dread. All the while
the shaft of phosphorescence from the well was getting brighter and
brighter, bringing to the minds of the huddled men, a sense of doom and
abnormality which far outraced any image their conscious minds could
form. It was no longer _shining_ out; it was _pouring_ out; and as the
shapeless stream of unplaceable colour left the well it seemed to flow
directly into the sky. [Illustration: ... and in the fearsome instant of deeper darkness, the
watchers saw wriggling at that treetop height, a thousand tiny points
of faint and unhallowed radiance, tipping each bough like the fire
of St. Elmo ... and all the while the shaft of phosphorescence from
the well was getting brighter and brighter and bringing to the minds
of the huddled men, a sense of doom and abnormality.... It was no
longer shining out; it was pouring out; and as the shapeless stream of
unplaceable colour left the well, it seemed to flow directly into the
sky.] The veterinary shivered, and walked to the front door to drop the heavy
extra bar across it. Ammi shook no less, and had to tug and point for
lack of a controllable voice when he wished to draw notice to the
growing luminosity of the trees. The neighing and stamping of the
horses had become utterly frightful, but not a soul of that group in
the old house would have ventured forth for any earthly reward. With
the moments the shining of the trees increased, while their restless
branches seemed to strain more and more toward verticality. The wood
of the well-sweep was shining now, and presently a policeman dumbly
pointed to some wooden sheds and beehives near the stone wall on the
west. They were commencing to shine, too, though the tethered vehicles
of the visitors seemed so far unaffected. Then there was a wild
commotion and clopping in the road, and as Ammi quenched the lamp for
better seeing they realized that the span of frantic grays had broken
their sapling and run off with the democrat-wagon. The shock served to loosen several tongues, and embarrassed whispers
were exchanged. "It spreads on everything organic that's been around
here," muttered the medical examiner. No one replied, but the man who
had been in the well gave a hint that his long pole must have stirred
up something intangible. "It was awful," he added. "There was no bottom
at all. Just ooze and bubbles and the feeling of something lurking
under there." Ammi's horse still pawed and screamed deafeningly in
the road outside, and nearly drowned its owner's faint quaver as he
mumbled his formless reflections. "It come from that stone--it growed
down thar--it got everything livin'--it fed itself on 'em, mind and
body--Thad an' Merwin, Zenas an' Nabby--Nahum was the last--they all
drunk the water--it got strong on 'em--it come from beyond, whar things
ain't like they be here--now it's goin' home--"

At this point, as the column of unknown colour flared suddenly stronger
and began to weave itself into fantastic suggestions of shape which
each spectator later described differently, there came from poor
tethered Hero such a sound as no man before or since ever heard from
a horse. Every person in that low-pitched sitting-room stopped his
ears, and Ammi turned away from the window in horror and nausea. Words
could not convey it--when Ammi looked out again the hapless beast lay
huddled inert on the moonlit ground between the splintered shafts of
the buggy. That was the last of Hero till they buried him next day. But the present was no time to mourn, for almost at this instant a
detective silently called attention to something terrible in the very
room with them. In the absence of the lamplight it was clear that a
faint phosphorescence had begun to pervade the entire apartment. It
glowed on the broad-planked floor where the rag carpet left it bare,
and shimmered over the sashes of the small-paned windows. It ran up
and down the exposed corner-posts, coruscated about the shelf and
mantel, and infected the very doors and furniture. Each minute saw it
strengthen, and at last it was very plain that healthy living things
must leave that house. Ammi showed them the back door and the path up through the fields to
the ten-acre pasture. They walked and stumbled as in a dream, and did
not dare look back till they were far away on the high ground. They
were glad of the path, for they could not have gone the front way, by
that well. It was bad enough passing the glowing barn and sheds, and
those shining orchard trees with their gnarled, fiendish contours; but
thank Heaven the branches did their worst twisting high up. The moon
went under some very black clouds as they crossed the rustic bridge
over Chapman's Brook, and it was blind groping from there to the open
meadows. *       *       *       *       *

When they looked back toward the valley and the distant Gardner place
at the bottom they saw a fearsome sight. All the farm was shining
with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even
such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey
brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues
of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were
creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds. It was a
scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot
of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of
cryptic poison from the well--seething, feeling, lapping, reaching,
scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and
unrecognizable chromaticism. Then without warning the hideous thing shot vertically up toward the
sky like a rocket or meteor, leaving behind no trail and disappearing
through a round and curiously regular hole in the clouds before any
man could gasp or cry out. No watcher can ever forget that sight, and
Ammi stared blankly at the stars of Cygnus, Deneb twinkling above the
others, where the unknown colour had melted into the Milky Way. But his
gaze was the next moment called swiftly to earth by the crackling in
the valley. It was just that. Only a wooden ripping and crackling, and
not an explosion, as so many others of the party vowed.