"Denis might have whispered more, but a fresh burst of distant wailing cut us short. For the first time we knew what it was, for a westerly veering wind brought articulate words at last. We ought to have known long before, since sounds much like it had often come from the same source. It was wrinkled Sophonisba, the ancient Zulu witchwoman who had fawned on Marceline, keening from her cabin in a way which crowned the horrors of this nightmare tragedy. We could both hear some of the things she howled, and knew that secret and primordial bonds linked this savage sorceress with that other inheritor of Elder secrets who had just been extirpated. Some of the words she used betrayed her closeness to demonic and palesgean traditions.
"'Iä! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! Ya-R'lyeh! N'gagi n'bulu bwana n'lolo! Ya, yo, pore Missy Tanit, pore Missy Isis! Marse Clooloo, come up outen de water an' git yo' chile—she done daid! She done daid! De har ain' got no missus no mo', Marse Clooloo. Ol' Sophy, she know! Ol' Sophy, she done got de black stone outen Big Zimbabwe in ol' Affriky! Ol' Sophy, she done dance in de moonshine roun' de crocodile-stone befo' de N'bangus cotch her and sell her to de ship folks! No mo' Tanit! No mo' Isis! No mo' witchwoman to keep de fire a-goin' in de big stone place! Ya, yo! N'gagi 'bulu bwana m'lolo! Iä! Shub-Niggurath! She daid! Ol' Sophy know!'
"That wasn't the end of the wailing, but it was all I could pay attention to. The expression on my boy's face showed that it had reminded him of something frightful, and the tightening of his hand on the machete boded no good. I knew he was desperate, and sprang to disarm him if possible before he could do anything more.
"But I was too late. An old man with a bad spine doesn't count for much physically. There was a struggle, but he had done for himself before many seconds were over. I'm not sure yet but that he tried to kill me, too. His last panting words were something about the need of wiping out everything that had ever been connected with Marceline, either by blood or marriage.
"I wonder to this day that I didn't go stark mad in that instant, or in the moments and hours afterward. In front of me was the slain body of my boy, the only human being I had to cherish, and ten feet away, in front of that shrouded easel, was the body of his best friend, with a nameless coil of horror wound around it. Below was the scalped corpse of that she-monster, about whom I was half ready to believe anything. I was too dazed to analyze the probability of the hair story, and even if I had not been, that dismal howling from Aunt Sophy's cabin would have been enough to quiet doubt.
"If I'd been wise, I'd have done just what poor Denis told me to—burned the picture and the body-grasping hair at once and without curiosity—but I was too shaken to be wise. I suppose I muttered foolish things over my boy—and then I remembered that the night was wearing on and that the servants would be back in the morning. It was plain that a matter like this could never be explained, and I knew that I must cover things up and invent a story.
"That coil of hair around Marsh was a monstrous thing. I didn't dare touch it, and the longer I looked at it the more horrible things I noticed about it. One thing gave me a start. I won't mention it, but it partly explained the need for feeding the hair with queer oils as Marceline had always done.
"In the end I decided to bury all three bodies in the cellar, with quicklime, which I knew we had in the storehouse. It was a night of hellish work. I dug three graves—my boy's a long way from the other two, for I didn't want him to be near either the woman's body or her hair. I was sorry I couldn't get the coil from around poor Marsh. It was terrible work getting them all down to the cellar. I used blankets in carting the woman and the poor devil with the coil around him. Then I had to get two barrels of lime from the storehouse. God must have given me strength, for I not only moved them both but filled all three graves without a hitch.
"Some of the lime I made into white-wash. I had to take a stepladder and fix over the parlor ceiling where the blood had oozed through. And I burned nearly everything in Marceline's room, scrubbing the walls and floor and heavy furniture. I washed up the attic studio, too, and the trail and footprints that led there. And all the time I could hear old Sophy's wailing in the distance. The devil must have been in that creature to let her voice go on like that. But she always was howling queer things. That's why the field niggers didn't get scared or curious that night. I locked the studio door and took the key to my room. Then I burned all my stained clothes in the fire-place. By dawn the whole house looked quite normal, so far as any casual eye could tell. I hadn't dared touch the covered easel, but meant to attend to that later.