Limekiller!

The jumby moved slowly along the trail with that gait or walk not like that of anyone or anything which Limekiller had ever seen. It did not lurch, though almost; and neither did it shamble, and vet — Flow? no, of course not that smoothlv — Odd the wav its hands held halfway up the body and slowly moving up and down and away — It moved slowly along the trail and now and then he could see its legs and the mud-caked hairs on the immense muscles of them; were its eyes deep-sunken and dim, were they glazed or was that a trick of the light or had they a translucent membrane, or -

It had been moving.

It was not moving now.

Something was moving.

Something else.

Limekiller heard it before he saw it, an odd and, dragging sound, but. somehow. not one all that unnatural. and he smelled it, too, before he saw it, and it had a stench of rot on and above its mere animal rankness: yet, stinking though this was, it was (this) no such utterly alien stench as the jumbv’s: What?

It was a hog, a wild hog, he thought a young boar-hog, he could not say just then which of the two kinds, warry or peccary, it was; it had been badly torn about the hindquarters, perhaps by one of the great cats, perhaps by one of its own kind, and its wounds had festered: a marvel it was still alive, it stumbled and gave a squeal of pain; and whilst Limekiller had observed all this, in a second or two, not more, that same while the other creature had sunk down and crouched and now it leaped and the wounded swine gave a long and prolonged shriek like that of a very large rat when the right rough kind of cat or dog has it by the neck or throat: this ended so suddenly that he realized it had ended even while it still echoed. The ephialtes. " on-leap ers'. incubus. demon. nightmares, fevers, chills.

Still Limekiller crouched; flies settled in his sweat, ants made trek-tracks up his legs; he would stay and not move, never move, whilst the jumby growled and rottled and tore at its prey: the jumby did not do this.

Once, once only, it wrung its head half to one side — thus he saw the dead hog, torn, dangling from the dreadful jaws — some faint notion in his mind that some faint notice was in the jumby’s mind… of something behind and aside from it: some dim adumbration of which had caused the hideous head to turn: but which was either not important enough or perhaps somehow unpleasant enough. the jumby’s head turned again, with a sudden drip-spray of blood; the inhuman-human head slightly bowed beneath the weight of its kill. and even a young wild boar-hog being no lightweight: only slightly bowed. turned back and away and after a while it-the-jumby had failed from sight.

Still Limekiller stayed there, there, behind and beside the great silky-tree, like the shadow of a great rock in a dry land. Presently he bethought him that the jumby, as it had not eaten its kill then and there, was certainly taking it elsewhere: sundry scenes suggested them in his mind: the jumby hanging the hog-lych in a tree to (as it were) ripen: the jumby lodging or burying it in a cave for the same purpose: the jumby. ah, most horrible scene of all! the jumby carrying its kill away to feed its young!.. if it had young. and, if so, and however so, and whatever so or not so: the jumby had gone

and was not about to come again quite soon.

* * *

He had given thought to his choices: rise and flee as quickly as might be, and risk the sound of his flight reaching the small and malformed and more than merely animal-like ears of the abomination: take one’s time and make haste as slowly as possible, and as silently, and risk that, against all logic (logic! what had logic to do with what he had just seen?), the thing might yet return and leap upon him from behind.

Later, when, despite all efforts (I won’t think about it. I won’t think about it. I won’t think about it), he thought about it, he was not able to recall which had been his supposed chosen thought: perhaps neither; perhaps, in turn, both. He did remember thinking about something else — perhaps it was not after all, else —

Had poor Wee Willie Wiggins also, firstly, heard a parrot imitating those same nightmare sounds, allowing for bird-distortion; and, secondly, had he, cursed-by-birth and cursed-from-birth, Wee Willy Wiggins, heard/seen the jumby?… or perhaps the other way round? The order mattered not a bit: in either case, if so, was it any wonder that the lee mahn was fright for parrot?

No. No wonder. Not one bit.

Also he, John Limekiller, later remembered remembering something else as well.