Then he gripped his father round the waist and lifted him from the ground. The little man, struggling in those iron arms, screamed, cursed, and battered at the face above him, kicking and biting in his frenzy.
“The Killer! wad ye ken wha's the Killer? Go and ask 'em at Kenmuir! Ask yer ——”
David swayed slightly, crushing the body in his arms till it seemed every rib must break; then hurled it from him with all the might of passion. The little man fell with a crash and a groan.
The blaze in the corner flared, flickered, and died. There was hell-black darkness, and silence of the dead.
David stood against the wall, panting, every nerve tightstrung as the hawser of a straining ship.
In the corner lay the body of his father, limp and still; and in the room one other living thing was moving.
He clung close to the wall, pressing it with wet hands. The horror of it all, the darkness, the man in the corner, that moving something, petrified him.
“Feyther!” he whispered.
There was no reply. A chair creaked at an invisible touch. Something was creeping, stealing, crawling closer.
David was afraid.