The Graveyard Rats
hellish life; and the glazed eyes swollen and bulbous betrayed the
thing’s blindness. It made a faint groaning sound at it crawled toward
Masson, stretching its ragged and granulated lips in a grin of dreadful
hunger. And Masson was frozen with abysmal fear and loathing.
Just before the Horror touched him, Masson flung himself frantically
into the burrow at his side. He heard a scrambling noise at his heels,
and the thing groaned dully as it came after him. Masson, glancing over
his shoulder, screamed and propelled himself desperately through the
narrow burrow. He crawled along awkwardly, sharp stones cutting his
hands and knees. Dirt showered into his eyes, but he dared not pause
even for a moment. He scrambled on, gasping, cursing, and praying
hysterically.
Squealing triumphantly, the rats came at him, horrible hunger in their
eyes. Masson almost succumbed to their vicious teeth before he succeeded
in beating them off. The passage was narrowing, and in a frenzy of
terror he kicked and screamed and fired until the hammer clicked on an
empty shell. But he had driven them off.
He found himself crawling under a great stone, embedded in the roof,
that dug cruelly into his back. It moved a little as his weight struck
it, and an idea flashed into Masson’s fright-crazed mind. If he could
bring down the stone so that it blocked the tunnel!
The earth was wet and soggy from the rains, and he hunched himself half
upright and dug away at the dirt around the stone. The rats were coming
closer. He saw their eyes glowing in the reflection of the flashlight’s
beam. Still he clawed frantically at the earth. The stone was giving. He
tugged at it and it rocked in its foundation.
* * * * *
A rat was approaching—the monster he had already glimpsed. Gray and
leprous and hideous it crept forward with its orange teeth bared, and in
its wake came the blind dead thing, groaning as it crawled. Masson gave
a last frantic tug at the stone. He felt it slide downward, and then he
went scrambling along the tunnel.
Behind him the stone crashed down, and he heard a sudden frightful
shriek of agony. Clods showered upon his legs. A heavy weight fell on
his feet and he dragged them free with difficulty. The entire tunnel was
collapsing!
Gasping with fear, Masson threw himself forward as the soggy earth
collapsed at his heels. The tunnel narrowed until he could barely use
his hands and legs to propel himself; he wriggled forward like an eel
and suddenly felt satin tearing beneath his clawing fingers, and then
his head crashed against something that barred his path. He moved his
legs, discovering that they were not pinned under the collapsed earth.
He was lying flat on his stomach, and when he tried to raise himself he
found that the roof was only a few inches from his back. Panic shot
through him.
When the blind horror had blocked his path, he had flung himself
desperately into a side tunnel, a tunnel that had no outlet. He was _in
a coffin_, an empty coffin into which he had crept through the hole the
rats had gnawed in its end!
He tried to turn on his back and found that he could not. The lid of the
coffin pinned him down inexorably. Then he braced himself and strained
at the coffin lid. It was immovable, and even if he could escape from
the sarcophagus, how could he claw his way up through five feet of
hard-packed earth?
He found himself gasping. It was dreadfully fetid, unbearably hot. In a
paroxysm of terror he ripped and clawed at the satin until it was
shredded. He made a futile attempt to dig with his feet at the earth
from the collapsed burrow that blocked his retreat. If he were only able
to reverse his position he might be able to claw his way through to
air... air....
White-hot agony lanced through his breast, throbbed in his eyeballs. His
head seemed to be swelling, growing larger and larger; and suddenly he
heard the exultant squealing of the rats. He began to scream insanely
but could not drown them out. For a moment he thrashed about
hysterically within his narrow prison, and then he was quiet, gasping
for air. His eyelids closed, his blackened tongue protruded, and he sank
down into the blackness of death with the mad squealing of the rats
dinning in his ears.