Weird Tales by Weird Tales

Author:Weird Tales
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press

When the manuscript was finished I sat thinking for a little time. So this book was written on a human hide, which when occupied had enclosed Pierre’s ancestor.

“I thought,” said I to the old man, ‘‘that you told me that the person described in the narrative was your grandpère many times removed. But here it relates that his only child was murdered by himself. How do you explain that?” I asked.

“You will remember perhaps that he told how, after the flight from the cottage, immediately succeeding the act was a blank, save for a vague remembrance of shots. What is more probable than that someone aroused by the howling in the night should fire blindly at the noise, not once but several times. Granted that, it is probable that, frightened by the unexpected noise, the beasts would leave their prey. Such is the legend that has accompanied the book for centuries. Also it is said that this book has never been out of the possession of the Hungarian’s descendants. Therefore, observing that I now possess the book, which was given to me by my father, as it was to him by his parent, I assume that in my veins courses the diluted strain of the werewolf.”

“This may all be true,” I said. “Surely in the weeks of his imprisonment he must have been informed that his little girl had not been devoured; yet he speaks consistently through the tale, as if he knew nothing about the rescue.”

“Ah,” he replied, “that puzzled me also when I first heard of this. But it is my sincere belief that this information was kept purposely from him to add mental torture to his physical punishment. Why should they trouble themselves to ease the spirit of a man that was responsible for so many crimes?” And such a cruel glitter lit his eyes that I had nothing more to say.

After I had left I congratulated myself upon being so fortunate as to exist in the prosaic Twentieth Century, and not in the superstition-ridden ones which we have just barely left. For even superstitions must have a beginning, and who knows how much truth may lie, after all, in this weird tale?

I never went back to the inn after that. I often meant to, but other business was more important, and procrastination finally made the journey useless.

Pierre is dead now, leaving no relatives or friends but myself. I now possess the book and it lies before me, as I write the story it contains for the world to read, and to laugh at in scorn.

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