"A. E. Merritt - The Pool of the Stone God" - читать интересную книгу автора (Merritt A. E)

My eyes had been drawn to the stone idol. Was it an effect of the moonlight or did it move? No, it was
the wings! They stood out from the stone and waved-they waved, I say, from the ankles to the neck of
that monstrous statue.
Bates had seen them, too. He was standing with his pistol raised. Then there was a shot. And after that
the air was filled with a rushing sound like that of a thousand fans. I saw the wings loose themselves from
the stone god and sweep down in a cloud upon the four men. Another cloud raced up from the pool and
joined them. I could not move. The wings circled swiftly around and about the four. All were now on
their feet and I never saw such horror as was in their faces.

Then the wings closed in. They clung to my companions as they had clung to the stone.

I fell back into the hut. I lay there through the night insane with terror. Many times I heard the fan-like
rushing about the enclosure, but nothing entered my hut. Dawn came, and silence, and I dragged myself
to the door. There stood the stone god with the wings carved upon him as we had seen him ten hours
before!

I ran over to the four lying on the grass. I thought that perhaps I had had a nightmare. But they were
dead. That was not the worst of it. Each man was shrunken to his bones! They looked like collapsed
white balloons. There was not a drop of blood in them. They were nothing but bones wrapped around in
thin skin!

Mastering myself, I went close to the idol. There was something different about it. It seemed larger-as
though, the thought went through my mind, as though it had eaten. Then I saw that it was covered with
tiny drops of blood that had dropped from the ends of the wings that clothed it!

I do not remember what happened afterward. I awoke on the pearling schooner Luana which had picked
me up, crazed with thirst as they supposed in the boat of the Moranus.

THE END