The candlelight was very faint, yet served to show most of the
principal features. I noticed the low, slanting roof, the huge enlarged
dormer, the curios and trophies hung on the walls, and most of all, the
great shrouded easel in the center of the floor. To that easel de Russy
now walked, drawing aside the dusty velvet hangings on the side turned
away from me, and motioning me silently to approach. It took a good
deal of courage to make me obey, especially when I saw how my guide's
eyes dilated in the wavering candlelight as he looked at the unveiled
canvas. But again curiosity conquered everything, and I walked around
to where de Russy stood. Then I saw the damnable thing. I did not faint, though no reader can possibly realize the effort it
took to keep me from doing so. I did cry out, but stopped short when
I saw the frightened look on the old man's face. As I had expected,
the canvas was warped, moldy, and scabrous from dampness and neglect;
but for all that I could trace the monstrous hints of evil cosmic
outsideness that lurked all through the nameless scene's morbid content
and perverted geometry. It was as the old man had said: a vaulted, columned hell of mingled
Black Masses and witches' sabbats, and what perfect completion could
have added to it was beyond my power to guess. Decay had only increased
the utter hideousness of its wicked symbolism and diseased suggestion;
for the parts most affected by time were just these parts of the
picture which in nature--or in that extra-cosmic realm that mocked
nature--would be likely to decay or disintegrate. The utmost horror of all, of course, was Marceline; and as I saw the
bloated, discolored flesh I formed the odd fancy that perhaps the
figure on the canvas had some obscure, occult linkage with the figure
which lay in quicklime under the cellar floor. Perhaps the lime had
preserved the corpse instead of destroying it--but could it have
preserved those black, malign eyes that glared and mocked at me from
their painted hell? And there was something else about the creature which I could not fail
to notice--something which de Russy had not been able to put into
words, but which perhaps had something to do with Denis' wish to kill
all those of his blood who had dwelt under the same roof with her. Whether Marsh knew, or whether the genius in him painted it without his
knowing, none could say. But Denis and his father could not have known
till they saw the picture. Surpassing all in horror was the streaming black hair, which covered
the rotting body, _but which was itself not even slightly decayed_. All I had heard of it was amply verified. It was nothing human, this
ropy, sinuous, half-oily, half-crinkly flood of serpent darkness. Vile, independent life proclaimed itself at every unnatural twist and
convolution, and the suggestion of numberless _reptilian_ heads at the
out-turned ends was far too marked to be illusory or accidental. *       *       *       *       *

The blasphemous thing held me like a magnet. I was helpless, and
did not wonder at the myth of the gorgon's glance which turned all
beholders to stone. Then I thought I saw a change come over the thing. The leering features perceptibly moved, so that the rotting jaw fell,
allowing the thick, beast-like lips to disclose a row of pointed yellow
fangs. The pupils of the fiendish eyes dilated, and the eyes themselves
seemed to bulge outward. And the hair--that accursed hair! _It had
begun to rustle and wave perceptibly, the snake-heads all turning
toward de Russy and vibrating as if to strike!_

Reason deserted me altogether, and before I knew what I was doing
I drew my revolver and sent a shower of six steel-jacketed bullets
through the shocking canvas. The whole thing at once fell to pieces,
even the frame toppling from the easel and clattering to the
dust-covered floor. But though this horror was shattered, another had
risen before me in the form of de Russy himself, whose maddened shrieks
as he saw the picture vanish were almost as terrible as the picture
itself had been. With a half-articulate scream of "God, now you've done it!" the frantic
old man seized me violently by the arm and commenced to drag me out of
the room and down the rickety stairs. He had dropped the candle in his
panic, but dawn was near, and some faint gray light was filtering in
through the dust-covered windows. I tripped and stumbled repeatedly,
but never for a moment would my guide slacken his pace. "Run!" he shrieked, "run for your life! You don't know what you've
done! I never told you the whole thing! There were things I had to
do--_the picture talked to me and told me_. I had to guard and keep
it--now the worst will happen! _She and that hair will come up out of
their graves, for God knows what purpose!_

"Hurry, man! For God's sake let's get out of here while there's time. If you have a car, take me along to Cape Girardeau with you. It may get
me in the end, anywhere, but I'll give it a run for its money. Out of
here--quick!" As we reached the ground floor I became aware of a slow, curious
thumping from the rear of the house, followed by the sound of a door
shutting. De Russy had not heard the thumping, but the other noise
caught his ear and drew from him the most terrible shriek that ever
sounded in human throat. "_Oh, God--great God--that was the cellar door--she's coming_----"

By this time I was desperately wrestling with the rusty latch and
sagging hinges of the great front door--almost as frantic as my host,
now that I heard the slow, thumping tread approaching from the unknown
rear rooms of the accursed mansion. The night's rain had warped the
oaken planks, and the heavy door stuck and resisted even more strongly
than it had when I forced an entrance the evening before. Somewhere a plank creaked beneath the foot of whatever was walking, and
the sound seemed to snap the last cord of sanity in the poor old man. With a roar like that of a maddened bull he released his grip on me
and made a plunge to the right, through the open door of a room which
I judged had been a parlor. A second later, just as I got the front
door open and was making my own escape, I heard the tinkling clatter of
broken glass and knew he had leapt through a window. And as I bounded
off the sagging porch to commence my mad race down the long, weed-grown
drive I thought I could catch the thud of dead, dogged footfalls which
did not follow me, but which kept leadenly on through the door of the
cobwebbed parlor. I looked backward only twice as I plunged heedlessly through the
burrs and briars of that abandoned drive, past the dying lindens and
grotesque scrub-oaks, in the gray pallor of a cloudy November dawn. The first time was when an acrid smell overtook me, and I thought of
the candle de Russy had dropped in the attic studio.