The Thing from the Lake Part 32

The Professor was momentarily posed. He looked disconcerted, took off his gla.s.ses and put them on again, and at length muttered something about storm-wind dissipating the miasma in the air and events being mere coincidence.

The house was never again visited by the Dark Presence. Phantom or fancy, the horror was gone as if it never had brooded about the place.

Desire Locke is a fatal companion only to my heart.

But whether all this is so because the lake is drained and the Shetland pony of a young Vere browses over the green pasture that was once a miasmic swamp; or whether it is so for more subtle, wilder reasons, no one can say. I, recalling that colossal Barrier I visioned as closed and a certain cleaving arrow of light, must at least call the coincidence amazing.

As I have said, my wife and I, Ethan Vere and Bagheera the cat have an understanding between us.