Part 2

The man saw the winged apparition coming at him. His hands lifted in defense, but in the next instant the creature's needle-shaped snout plunged into his chest like a thrust sword. Then, with a blur of wings, the creature pulled free and circled away. The man did not move again. He stood with hands still defensively raised, statuesque, frozen. It was as if a lightning paralysis had struck him.

* * * * *

Bryan checked himself sharply, shocked by what he had seen. There was a wrenching unexpectedness about it, a chilling weirdness. And yet it held a certain logic, a deadly significance. For Bryan recalled what Dave had told him about the previous park victim. The man had been found with a queer reddish mark near the shoulder--a mark that presently had vanished. Now Bryan thought he knew how it had been caused. But how could an object penetrate flesh and bone--as he had seen the flying thing's needle-like proboscis pierce the chest of the man before the pavilion--and still make no wound, leave only a reddish mark that soon faded?

Only a few instants had passed. The winged band was still descending toward the pavilion. But Bryan's presence on the scene had been noticed. Two of the mosquito-men--their appearance automatically suggested the term--were even now curving toward him.

Bryan saw them approach. He tensed, fighting back his dismay.

Flight was out of the question. He had seen the mosquito-men in action and knew they could easily overtake him. That left only--

Bryan whipped off his jacket. He flailed at his attackers with it as they closed in. They darted back, their huge eyes widening as if in startled confusion. There was a quality about them as child-like as their shapes, appealing--and somehow not evil. It was a thing Bryan did not understand and which at the moment he had no time to fathom.

He pressed his advantage, beating at the shapes with the jacket. It was as though he beat at phantoms. He could feel no contact with solidity through the cloth. And the mosquito-men seemed to realize their immunity, for abruptly they closed in, their sharp snouts thrusting at him. He twisted aside to evade one--but the second reached him before he could move again. Its needle-shaped organ speared his shoulder.

Bryan felt a brief pain, a sensation as though electricity had surged through him. Then a complete terrible numbness gripped his body. He could not move. He could still see, could still think, but his muscles were fettered by an overwhelming paralysis.

He could still think--but it was difficult. His mind seemed detached and vague, and somehow touched by a pulse of thought not his own. Alien rhythms beat in it, formless, confused. And then--

"Leeta! This one resisted! He did not fear us as did the others."

Child-like, piping, filled with excitement. And yet through the thought ran an undercurrent of wistful yearning, of trembling hope.

Then another thought: "Take him, Leeta! He is brave."

"Patience, little ones." Strangely soft and clear, this thought, ringing like delicate silver chimes.

At the edge of his field of vision, through eyes he could no longer control, Bryan saw movement--the sweep and flutter of great wings. Then a slim figure moved into his sight, a figure in a simple draped garment, walking as lightly and gracefully as though on air.

Leeta, he knew. Wonder rose in him--and sudden fascination.

Spectre? Witch? He could not decide. His eyes told him that she was woman--a woman like few he had seen, slender yet softly rounded, dainty yet with a suggestion of strength. Her small features held an odd startling loveliness, elfin, somehow ... _other-race_. Her eyes were tilted and strangely large, the nostrils of her tiny nose deeply indented and flaring, her chin pointed. Her gleaming black hair was long, thick, gently curling, a contrasting frame for flawless white skin.

She glowed luminously. And--he could see through her. Like the mosquito-men, like the giant bird, she was mistily transparent, inexplicably unsubstantial.

* * * * *

She stood before him, then. Her great liquid eyes gazed at him in wonder, with a searching curiosity. There was a tenseness and urgency about her, as though she were driven by some desperate all-important purpose. And there was an air of tragedy about her, a despair, a quality of wistful yearning like that Bryan had sensed in the child-like piping thoughts. The mystery of this woman caught at him, drew him.

Witch? Again he wondered. He could find nothing evil in her face, nothing of cruelty or guile. Behind the compelling anxiety in her eyes, the sadness that touched her full lips, was ... innocence.

The curiosity faded from her face. The tenseness and urgency that had been lurking in her abruptly became dominant.

Her hands lifted. Bryan saw now that she held an object in them, a globe of cloudy gray crystal, within which seemed to lay a core of pale rose light. And the light, he noticed, waxed and waned in a slow pulsing.

Bryan detected a sudden eagerness in the winged shapes that hovered beyond. And with the eagerness came the child-like piping.

"Take him, Leeta! He has courage. This time you may succeed."

An answering thought; soft, holding a delicate note. "Patience...."

Then Bryan saw the crystal globe being lifted still higher--toward his face. Behind it the girl's large exotic eyes seemed very intent. Within the globe the pulsing of the pale rose core quickened.

Bryan felt something draw at him. A strange force--like insistent hands. Hands immaterial and yet tangible, that reached into him ... and pulled.

It was not a physical sensation. Nor was it purely mental. It was something that went beyond even this--something that gripped at the very foundation of being.

Bryan felt himself being drawn. And he did not understand. There was a purpose here and a means he could not grasp.

He resisted.

In a moment the force left him.

The globe lowered. Over it the girl peered at him, startled, perplexed. And from the background came a piping despair.

"Failed.... It has failed...."

"He has a strength I have not met before." An echo of that other despair lay in the silver chiming. And an overtone of awe. "He cannot be taken--and that is strange. He has qualities I cannot quite explain. But his will is great--great enough, I think, to penetrate the veil unaided."

"He cannot be taken...." The piping again, sorrowfully resigned.

Bryan was aware of the girl's eyes on him. The wistfulness in them seemed to have grown. And from some deep recess within him rose a sudden queer aching.

"Farewell...."

Farewell? Protest surged in him. He struggled to make a detaining gesture--but it was futile. She turned away.

* * * * *

The hovering winged shapes followed her. Moving swiftly and lightly, she went toward the pavilion, before which the statuesque man stood beside the prone figure of the unconscious girl.

She lifted the globe to the man ... its inner pulsing quickened. A radiance grew in it, as though some energy were being absorbed. The pulsing was very rapid now--triumphant.

Then the girl turned, hurrying back to the giant bird, which was waiting nearby. Behind her, even as she turned, the man swayed--fell. He fell loosely, emptily, his eyes open.

The girl leaped to the bird's back. In another moment it sprang into the air, huge wings beating. Higher it lifted, and higher. The mosquito-men followed. All soared beyond Bryan's range of vision, and the beating of wings faded ... died.

Slowly the paralysis left Bryan. He flexed his limbs stiffly. His muscles ached, as though from cramp.

He went over to the sprawled figures of the man and the girl, then. The man had the same terrible unresponsive limpness as the man Bryan had seen at the hospital. He was beyond any aid Bryan could give.

Bryan turned his attention to the girl in an effort to quicken her return to consciousness. Shortly her eyes opened--then flared with recollection. She glanced swiftly about her, fright twisting at her face.

In the next instant she saw her fallen escort and seemed to realize for the first time that Bryan was a stranger. She went quickly to the other man and lifted his head.

"Tom!" she cried. "Tom! What is the matter?" Horror grew in her voice. "Why don't you answer me?"

Empty eyes that looked sightlessly into the night. Slack gaping lips that did not move.

The girl turned to Bryan with an expression of bewildered grief. "How ... how did this terrible thing happen?"

Bryan hesitated. What he had experienced now seemed too wildly improbable to discuss. The very improbability of it could only add to the girl's suffering. And for a reason he did not fully understand he wanted to keep to himself the knowledge of that strangely lovely apparition whose name, it appeared, was Leeta.

He shook his head. "I'm afraid I don't know."

The girl's control seemed to break. She covered her face with her hands, convulsive sobs shaking her.

Bryan waited helplessly, with a feeling of guilt. In another moment, over the muffled sobbing, he heard the sound of approaching feet. A flashlight beam bobbed into view up one of the radiating walks, and presently Bryan was able to make out the blue-clad running figure of a patrolman.

"What's going on?" the patrolman demanded. "I heard a scream." He moved his flashlight beam from the girl and the prostrate man, to Bryan. He added in surprise, "You here, Terry?"

Bryan nodded a greeting, recognizing the other now as Pat Mulvaney, a park officer. "This man seems to be hurt, Pat. We'd better get him to a hospital."

Mulvaney bent over the sprawling figure, then returned to Bryan, speaking low-voiced. "Hurt ain't the word for it, Terry. This case is like the other ones we found in the park. And it would have to happen tonight. Olson was supposed to be on duty at this end, but he sprained an ankle. We're short-handed, what with the Department being on a budget."

With the girl tearfully following, Bryan and Mulvaney carried the stricken man to a call box, where Mulvaney telephoned his report and requested that an ambulance be sent. Bryan was asked to accompany the girl to headquarters, in a squad car, for questioning.

* * * * *

It wasn't until shortly before dawn that Bryan reached his room and began undressing for bed. He examined his bare shoulder in a mirror. There was a reddish patch on the skin, the size of a half-dollar piece, where the sharp snout of the mosquito-man had pierced him. The mark convinced him further that the whole thing had been no mere hallucination.

He felt no pain--but his body seemed faintly, oddly feverish. And he had a light-headed feeling that could not have been entirely due to tiredness.

He took a stiff drink of whisky and crawled into bed. Sleep would not come at once. Confused thoughts revolved in his mind.

He saw himself at police headquarters, answering questions. The girl had told her story up to the instant she had fainted, mentioning the flying shapes. She was unable to describe them, except to say the strangeness of their appearance had terrified her. Bryan was reluctant to discuss his own experience, but the girl had told of hearing his warning, and this placed him squarely on the scene. He could not claim ignorance of ensuing events without laying himself open to suspicion.

He had told of seeing the flying shapes also, but claimed he had been unable to make out details. They had moved too swiftly, his explanation went, it had been too dark. One had rushed at the man, knocking him down, then all had flown out of sight. A vague story--evasive. But the police had seemed satisfied, to the extent that the story checked with the girl's.

The flying shapes ... Leeta.... A curious excitement surged in him as he thought of the wraithlike girl. Who was she? Where had she come from?

He recalled something she had said--something about his will being strong enough to penetrate the veil unaided. It seemed important. But what had she meant by that? What--and where--was the veil?

And--how had he been able to understand her? He realized now that neither she nor the others had used audible speech, yet he had the impression of intelligible spoken words, of voice tones.

He pondered the mystery with a growing fogginess. He slept.

And then he was not sleeping.

He was standing on a mountain ridge, looking down into a broad green valley. It was daylight. In the sky hung a great red-tinged sun, which immediately struck him as--alien. But for the moment his wonder remained concentrated on the valley. There was something there that drew him--that had drawn him there. A bond of some sort existed, an indefinable ethereal linking, over which he had crossed like a bridge. A bond, he sensed, that even now was somehow fading ... dissolving.

The valley was a pleasant place, idyllic. Peace and quiet were cupped within it. He had the sudden, insistent feeling that he had been seeking a place like this, a place where he could be happy, where his blind strivings would find fulfillment. A place--_where_?

He turned to gaze on the other side of the ridge. And saw--horror. The land here was a ghostly desolation, blackened, charred, lifeless, bathed in an eery shimmering blue radiance. An unutterably deadly radiance, he knew in some strange way. And he knew, too, that the radiance lay everywhere--except in this lone valley.

He returned his attention to it with a mounting urgency. The scene was growing dim, blurring. It was escaping him. He made a frantic exertion of will, seeking in what few moments that remained an answer to a certain question.

There was ... a shifting. The ridge was gone. He stood within the valley, at the foot of a rocky slope, up which ran a curving stairway of a building of some pink stone. The building was exotic in design, terraced, domed, fairy-like. All around it strangely beautiful flowers and shrubs grew in riotous profusion. He had the nostalgic impression of heady fragrance and warm breeze, of serenity and peace. And he felt a queer ache of longing.

Then, breaking abruptly through the deep stillness, he seemed to hear a faint piping. He turned in search and saw a flagstone path through a lane of trees. At the end of the lane was movement, a flutter as of wings.

* * * * *

He willed himself toward it. Again there was a shifting. And now he stood at the edge of a broad shallow depression, like a sunken garden. The path dipped down into this by a short stairway and ran on to circle what appeared to be a pool at the center. All around the pool flowers grew with an incredible luxuriance and splendor, thick masses of flowers, startling in their size and beauty, that made the air almost solid with their mingled perfume. It was as though they found some abnormally rich nourishment here that stimulated their fantastically prolific growth.

The very atmosphere of this place seemed charged with a vital energy. Bryan had a feeling of surging life, of boundless power. And he sensed that it came from the pool. Something more than water was contained within it, something strange, supernal--god-like.

The pool was filled with a pearly opalescence, alive and seething with delicate pastel hues, swirling, changing. Sparkles of chromatic brilliance raced over its surface, blazing and vanishing. A glow rose from it like a gorgeous rainbow-colored mist, spreading, charging the air with vibrant energy.

But the weird magnificence of the pool held Bryan's attention only momentarily. For kneeling at its brink like a nymph in an enchanted setting was ... Leeta. In a semi-circle behind her a score or more of the grotesque mosquito-men made a fascinated audience. The giant bird, too, was visible, squatting, motionless.

In her hands the girl held the crystal globe, shining with its stolen radiance. Now she leaned forward, lowering the globe to the surface of the pool. It seemed to float, pulsing. Sparkles from the pool ran to it in a growing boil of motion--and were absorbed. The activity grew swifter and yet swifter, until the pool seethed and foamed with brilliance. The air turned electric with a sensation of vast striving, of super-human effort.

Watching puzzled, from his vantage point above the depression, Bryan saw the globe begin to swell. Its radiance blazed feverishly, its pulsing increased to a frenzied beat. Larger, it grew--larger. Became misty, unsubstantial, unreal. The rose core of it grew also, elongating, paling to pink. And now it was taking shape--the shape of a man. Features began forming, and then--

Stunned amazement hit Bryan as he peered intently at the figure being so weirdly created. For recognition had come. He was looking at the man who, a short time before, had been attacked in the park by Leeta and her bizarre followers.

The shape was taking on solidity. Dazed, Bryan recalled the events in the park. Leeta's strange globe, he realized, had absorbed some vital essence from its victim--perhaps the soul--and this essence was now being released by the pool. Released, somehow, in a perfect replica of the fleshly covering that originally had housed it.

The man hung over the pool. His closed eyes fluttered, opened. Animation touched his face. Fear showed in it, a rising horror, a frantic desperation. He struggled.

And began dissolving.

The pool boiled and seethed as though in a mighty effort to hold its creation intact. It did not succeed. The shape thinned, shrunk, faded ... was gone.

There was a moment of stricken stillness. The pool had quieted. Its aura of supernal power had dimmed. An air of exhaustion lay over it now, an exhaustion in which even the surrounding flowers seemed to pale and droop.

Then a piping murmur rose like a sigh of mourning. "Failed ... again...."

And Leeta covered her face with her hands, sagging. Her bowed shoulders shook, with great sobs of mingled grief, disappointment and despair.

Bryan wanted to make some sign of sympathy, of consolation--but again the scene was growing blurred, fading. He fought to hold it together, fought as the pool had fought ... futilely. And then a hovering blackness rushed over him, and he seemed to whirl dizzily across an enormous gulf.

He awoke in bed, soaked with perspiration, breathing hard. He had a feeling of anger, dejection.

He swung his legs to the floor and glanced at his watch. He had been asleep for less than an hour, but at the moment he was too upset by his strangely realistic nightmare to return to bed.

He lit a cigarette and fell to pacing the length of his room. Thinking back over his disturbingly vivid dream, he wondered why he should have experienced it in that particular way. The events of the preceding night had been unnerving enough, but he felt there was a deeper reason. Was it possible that the queer wound he had received in the park had something to do with it? He recalled his feverishness, his light-headed sensation.

Then he thought of the man he had seen in the dream, and came to an abrupt stop. In another instant he sprang back into motion, hurrying to the telephone near the bed. He dialed the hospital to which the man had been taken from the park, waiting impatiently while the doctor in charge of the case was put on.

Identifying himself, then, he asked quickly, "How is the fellow, doctor?"

"Afraid I have bad news. He died about five minutes ago. There didn't seem to be a single thing I could do to prevent it."

"I see...." Bryan muttered his thanks and hung up. He sat staring into space.

Five minutes ago.... That would be shortly before he had awakened--about the time the image of the man, in the dream, had dissolved and vanished....

* * * * *

That afternoon Bryan sat at a secluded corner table in the small restaurant he frequented near the _Courier_ Building. The remains of a fourth cup of coffee stood before him, the saucer littered with cigarette butts. He was staring into the cup, brooding. His mind kept returning to his strange dream and its incredible implications. And tangled in the thread of his thoughts was the picture of Leeta, dainty and elfinly lovely, struggling toward an end he could only dimly grasp.

A slim figure dropped into the chair opposite Bryan. It was Joyce, crisp, fresh, giving her usual effect of elegance.

"Hi! A little bird told me I'd find you here, Terry." She studied his face in swift concern. "What on earth happened to you last night? You look like a fugitive from a horror movie."

"Maybe I am," Bryan grunted. And he grinned wryly at the element of truth in his retort.

Joyce was solemn, probing. "Terry, I heard what happened in the park last night. One of our fellow wage slaves is posted at Headquarters, you know. And from what he told me, I gather you were mixed up in something with a spook angle. But, Terry, it seems the police have the quaint idea you didn't give them the whole story."

He shook his head. "I'm not ready for the booby-hatch just yet."

"Then you didn't tell the whole story." She leaned forward, her face eager. "I'm dying with curiosity over what really happened, Terry. Want to tell me--or are you saving it for your memoirs?"

He lighted a fresh cigarette, considering. Joyce was an understanding person, he knew. And she had imagination. She could be trusted not to misinterpret the fantastic nature of his experience.

Speaking low-voiced, he told her of Leeta's arrival at the park, of the attack on the other man and himself by the grotesque and somehow unsubstantial mosquito-men, of the complete paralysis that had resulted.

Joyce broke in, "But, Terry, if the things weren't solid, how could they possibly have affected you?"

"I've been trying to figure out that angle," he said. "I think they were energy projections of some kind and were able to use this energy to stun their victims. It should work both ways--that is, some forms of energy from our end should be able to affect them, too."

He went on to describe the crystal globe and the use Leeta had made of it. Finally he mentioned his dream and his telephone call to the hospital.

Joyce looked shaken. "It ... it's gruesome, Terry. If anyone else had told me those things, I'd have said they were plain crazy." She hesitated. "This girl with the strange way of making men friends, what was she like?"

"She was ... beautiful," Bryan said. He stared into distance, seeing Leeta in memory again. His voice softened. "I've never met anyone like her."

"She's a witch!" Joyce said abruptly, an unnatural sharpness in her tone. "A vampire--a ghoul. What she's done is horrible, Terry. Someone should put a stop to her."

"She isn't a monster," Bryan returned in swift defense. "Not depraved or vicious. I don't quite understand it, but I feel there's a good reason for what she has been doing."

"She's a murderess, Terry!"

"According to our standards, yes. But I don't think she realizes she has been causing harm."

"That's generous of you," Joyce said. Her mockery held bitterness. "But your lady Bluebeard has to be kept from doing any more killing, Terry. Aren't you going to try to do something about it?"

He nodded grimly. "I'm going to keep watching the park. If she shows up again--and I think she will--I'll make an attempt to talk to her, reason with her. I have an idea about how it can be done."

"That's fine, Terry. I'm glad I don't have to do anything drastic to make an honest man of you."

He stared at her. "What do you mean by that?"

"This is a serious business, Terry. Men have died--and more men might die. If you don't do something about it, then somebody else will have to." She reached for her purse and rose abruptly. "I'll be running along. See you around."