I don't think I was particularly frightened at first. I had had some chemistry lessons with Mr. Ablethorpe, and we had gone pretty far on—boiling a penny in one kind of acid, and making limestone fizz with another—nitrochloric, or hydrochloric, I think. So I knew enough not to be frightened—at least not very badly. But what I saw next scared me stiff. I don't hide the fact. And so it would have scared you!
There was something on the lawn, dabbling among the shiny glimmer of the uprooted lily plots, crouching and scratching!
CHAPTER XXXIX
THE THING THAT SCRATCHED
Something living it was, and pretty active, too—no mistake about that. A dog? Possibly! But the next moment it stood erect on two feet like a man, and, turning slowly, peered all about. Then as suddenly it dropped down on all fours again and fell to the scraping. I could hear the sound distinctly in that lonesome place, where the water in the pond was too thick and heavy even to ripple, and where only the owl cried regularly once in five minutes.
I could not have spoken if I had tried, and I did not try. My tongue dried up like a piece of old bark, and I knew what the Bible meant when it said that sometimes a fellow's tongue clave to the roof of his mouth. Mine would, if the roof had not been as dry as a chip also.
You ask if I watched the Thing. You may take it for gospel that I could not have turned my head or averted my eyes for all the wealth of the Indies, though that, I understand, is a poor country enough.
Well, I saw the Thing scramble from grave to empty grave, scratch at each furiously, obscuring the dim phosphorescent glimmer. Then, standing erect, it flung up great clawlike hands with a ghoulish gesture of disappointment, moaning lamentably to the stars!
I tell you I dripped. My body trembled so that it shook the tree. So would yours have done, if you had been there—perhaps even a bigger tree.