Indubitably there
was a sort of heavy dragging, and a most detestably sticky noise as
of some fiendish and unclean species of suction. With an associative
sense goaded to feverish heights, he thought unaccountably of what he
had seen upstairs. Good God! What eldritch dream-world was this into
which he had blundered? He dared move neither backward nor forward, but
stood there trembling at the black curve of the boxed-in staircase. Every trifle of the scene burned itself into his brain. The sounds, the
sense of dread expectancy, the darkness, the steepness of the narrow
steps--and merciful Heaven!--the faint but unmistakable luminosity of
all the woodwork in sight; steps, sides, exposed laths, and beams alike. Then there burst forth a frantic whinny from Ammi's horse outside,
followed at once by a clatter which told of a frenzied runaway. In
another moment horse and buggy had gone beyond earshot, leaving the
frightened man on the dark stairs to guess what had sent them. But that
was not all. There had been another sound out there. A sort of liquid
splash--water--it must have been the well. He had left Hero untied
near it, and a buggy-wheel must have brushed the coping and knocked in
a stone. And still the pale phosphorescense glowed in that detestably
ancient woodwork. God! how old the house was! Most of it built before
1700. A feeble scratching on the floor downstairs now sounded distinctly, and
Ammi's grip tightened on a heavy stick he had picked up in the attic
for some purpose. Slowly nerving himself, he finished his descent and
walked boldly toward the kitchen. But he did not complete the walk,
because what he sought was no longer there. It had come to meet him,
and it was still alive after a fashion. Whether it had crawled or
whether it had been dragged by any external forces, Ammi could not
say; but the death had been at it. Everything had happened in the last
half-hour, but collapse, greying, and disintegration were already far
advanced. There was a horrible brittleness, and dry fragments were
scaling off. Ammi could not touch it, but looked horrifiedly into the
distorted parody that had been a face. "What was it, Nahum--what
was it?" He whispered, and the cleft, bulging lips were just able to
crackle out a final answer. "Nothin' ... nothin' ... the colour ... it burns ... cold an' wet, but
it burns ... it lived in the well.... I seen it ... a kind o' smoke ...
jest like the flowers last spring ... the well shone at night.... Thad
an' Merwin an' Zenas ... everything alive ... suckin' the life out of
everything ... in that stone ... it must o' come in that stone ...
pizened the whole place ... dun't know what it wants ... that round
thing them men from the college dug outen the stone ... they smashed
it ... it was that same colour ... jest the same, like the flowers an'
plants ... must a' ben more of 'em ... seeds ... seeds ... they
growed ... I seen it the fust time this week ... must a' got strong
on Zenas ... he was a big boy, full o' life ... it beats down your
mind an' then gits ye ... burns ye up ... in the well water ... you
was right about that ... evil water ... Zenas never come back from the
well ... can't git away ... draws ye ... ye know summ'at's comin', but
'tain't no use ... I seen it time an' agin Zenas was took ... whar's
Nabby, Ammi? ... my head's no good ... dun't know how long sence I fed
her ... it'll git her ef we ain't keerful ... jest a colour ... her
face is gittin' to hev that colour sometimes towards night ... an' it
burns an' sucks ... it come from some place whar things ain't as they
is here ... one o' them professors said so ... he was right ... look
out, Ammi, it'll do suthin' more ... sucks the life out...."

But that was all. That which spoke could speak no more because it had
completely caved in. Ammi laid a red checked tablecloth over what was
left and reeled out the back door into the fields. He climbed the slope
to the ten-acre pasture and stumbled home by the north road and the
woods. He could not pass that well from which his horses had run away. He had looked at it through the window, and had seen that no stone
was missing from the rim. Then the lurching buggy had not dislodged
anything after all--the splash had been something else--something which
went into the well after it had done with poor Nahum.... When Ammi reached his house the horses and buggy had arrived before
him and thrown his wife into fits of anxiety. Reassuring her without
explanations, he set out at once for Arkham and notified the
authorities that the Gardner family was no more. He indulged in no
details, but merely told of the deaths of Nahum and Nabby, that of
Thaddeus being already known, and mentioned that the cause seemed to
be the same strange ailment which had killed the livestock. He also
stated that Merwin and Zenas had disappeared. There was considerable
questioning at the police station, and in the end Ammi was compelled
to take three officers to the Gardner farm, together with the coroner,
the medical examiner, and the veterinary who had treated the diseased
animals. He went much against his will, for the afternoon was advancing
and he feared the fall of night over that accursed place, but it was
some comfort to have so many people with him. The six men drove out in a democrat-wagon, following Ammi's buggy, and
arrived at the pest-ridden farmhouse about four o'clock. Used as the
officers were to gruesome experiences, not one remained unmoved at
what was found in the attic and under the red checked tablecloth on
the floor below. The whole aspect of the farm with its grey desolation
was terrible enough, but those two crumbling objects were beyond all
bounds. No one could look long at them, and even the medical examiner
admitted that there was very little to examine. Specimens could be
analysed, of course, so he busied himself in obtaining them--and here
it develops that a very puzzling aftermath occurred at the college
laboratory where the two phials of dust were finally taken. Under the
spectroscope both samples gave off an unknown spectrum, in which many
of the baffling bands were precisely like those which the strange
meteor had yielded in the previous year. The property of emitting this
spectrum vanished in a month, the dust thereafter consisting mainly of
alkaline phosphates and carbonates. *       *       *       *       *

Ammi would not have told the men about the well if he had thought they
meant to do anything then and there. It was getting toward sunset, and
he was anxious to be away. But he could not help glancing nervously
at the stony curb by the great sweep, and when a detective questioned
him he admitted that Nahum had feared something down there--so much so
that he had never even thought of searching it for Merwin or Zenas. After that nothing would do but that they empty and explore the well
immediately, so Ammi had to wait trembling while pail after pail of
rank water was hauled up and splashed on the soaking ground outside.