（外文电子版资料）A. E. Merritt - The People of the Pit.pdf

-- The People of the Pit A. Merritt This page copyright © 2003 Blackmask Online. The People of the Pit NORTH OF us a shaft of light shot half way to the zenith. It came from behind the five peaks. The beam drove up through a column of blue haze whose edges were marked as sharply as the rain that streams from the edges of a thunder cloud. It was like the flash of a searchlight through an azure mist. It cast no shadows. As it struck upward the summits were outlined hard and black and I saw that the whole mountain was shaped like a hand. As the light silhouetted it, the gigantic fingers stretched, the hand seemed to thrust itself forward. It was exactly as though it moved to push something back. The shining beam held steady for a moment; then broke into myriads of little luminous globes that swung to and fro and dropped gently. They seemed to be searching. The forest had become very still. Every wood noise held its breath. I felt the dogs pressing against my legs. They too were silent; but every muscle in their bodies trembled, their hair was stiff along their backs and thier eyes, fixed on the falling lights, were filmed with the terror glaze. I looked at Anderson. He was staring at the North where once more the beam had pulsed upward. “It cant be the aurora,” I spoke without moving my lips. My mouth was as dry as though Lao Tzai had poured his fear dust down my throat. “If it is I never saw one like it,” he answered in the same tone. “Besides who ever heard of an aurora at this time of the year?” He voiced the thought that was in my own mind. “It makes me think something is being hunted up there,” he said, “an unholy sort of hunt—its well for us to be out of range.” “The mountain seems to move each time the shaft shoots up,” I said. “Whats it keeping back, Starr? It makes me think of the frozen hand of cloud that Shan Nadour set before the Gate of Ghouls to keep them in the lairs that Eblis cut for them.” He raised a hand—listeni