When his swollen, bleeding feet disappeared, the church door swung back and engulfed the revenuer's racked, gaunt bones within the ostracised temple of death. With stark eyes upward and ahead, he stared through the dark to the spot where a single lance of moonlight stabbed obliquely through the dismantled window, revealing a cross done in blood that lay prone athwart the untrodden pulpit floor.
Without, a white virgin mantle of peace and purity enveloped the haunted church. The honey clover, foxtail, mullein, and dill-poppies had closed over the horrible path-way leading to the church door-block. The panther was gone. A seductive south wind rippled across the blossomed clearing and a hundred families of unnamed flowers raised their heads and nodded to the stars. The far-off, drowsy baying of a hound drifted down from the ridge and trailed plaintively into the night. And from somewhere the sweet love-tale of the elusive nightingale was told over and over again. There was utter papal peace without for several moments. Then suddenly this magic spell was startlingly burst asunder with a rising tempo of sounds issuing from within the church. It grew into a horrific, guttural clash. The noise of contending demons dead-locked. The riotous commotion of a thousand struggling, distraught fiends told of some terrible enactment inside the church.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE HAUNTED CHURCH
As the trio approached the church, Buddy hung back reluctantly. He did not relish this nocturnal invasion of the gospel-house where no human foot had trod since the killing of his father. In truth, Lem shared this apprehension also, but was valiantly cautious not to betray this aversion in Belle-Ann's presence. With this cryptic timidity, both the boys marveled at the voluble mirth and bold blithesome advance of the girl; not understanding that Belle-Ann's education had burned away all barriers of superstition.
The denizens on Hellsfork had long given this lonely, desolate structure a wide berth. Many a bold and audacious spirit, knowing no other fear, quaked with the thought of entering that dilapidated storm-battered sepulchre. Not because a man had been killed therein, but there was a ghostly phenomenon connected with that musty, bat-haunted altar, uniquely horrible.
That rubric cross had cut its ragged blight into the senses of the mountaineers to a degree that forbade all thoughts of approach. There was something at once subtle and strange and unspeakably terrifying in the remembrance of that red picture, something that inspired them with a lasting, superstitious dread.
Indeed, a treasure trove could have reposed upon the dank floor of this haunted church within easy sight without fear of molestation. Weird and creepy tales were rife outlining amazing visitations here. It was told with conviction by some whose ears had heard, and whose eyes had seen, that on each moonlight night a screech-owl would flutter to the broken window of the church and call. Whereupon the red, ragged picture on the altar would stir and move and sit up; then gather itself into human semblance and stalk to the window. And old Captain Lutts' ghost would commune with the little feathered creature. Then the screech-owl would hurtle away, and the phantom would stalk back and lie down, and resolve itself again into that fearsome, crimson death-splotch that naught save fire could ever obliterate.
Belle-Ann was in the lead when the three reached the door-block of the church. Then, with a self-conscious lack of chivalry which inspired him with a sudden spurt of courage, Lem stepped in front of her, where he stood lighting the lantern, when Buddy, who had halted at the corner of the building, suddenly hissed softly and motioned for them to join him. Bud stood pointing ominously amid the skeleton limbs of a dead sycamore tree. Belle-Ann laughed amusedly.