Shadow on the Sun by Richard Matheson

behind Corcoran’s eyes. With a deranged sob, he pulled the trigger and fired a bullet into the man’s chest.
    Â 
    Finley jerked the mare around and looked in all directions. Dear Christ, was he too late already?
    In the distance, a second shot rang out and echoed off the hills.
    Â 
    Corcoran stood frozenly, staring at the man. His mouth hung open; a line of spittle ran across his jaw.
    The man stood smiling at him.
    Corcoran fired again, instinctively.
    The man twitched back a little but did not fall. A hollow sound of disbelief stirred in Corcoran’s throat.
    â€œWho are you?” he asked, but the words came out only as a jumble of brainless sounds.
    The man took a step toward him.
    â€œNo.” Corcoran edged back, his eyes wide with terror.
    The man kept coming. With a sobbing gasp, Corcoran fired again, and again. He kept pulling the trigger even when there was only the click of the hammer on empty chambers.
    â€œAll gone,” said the man.
    Corcoran cried out hoarsely as he backed against the tree. He pressed against the gnarled trunk tightly, shaking his head in tiny, fitful jerks, his eyes bright and staring.
    â€œ
Who are you
?” he gasped.
    The man stopped a few paces away.
    â€œ
Look
,” he said, and he stretched out his arms.
    Corcoran recoiled against the tree, the beginning of a scream strangled in his throat. He stood there for a moment looking at the man with eyes that had lost their sanity. Then his vibrating legs gave way, and he slid down to a half-sitting position on the tree roots, looking up stupidly at the man and what the man was becoming.
    When the monstrous shadow fell across him, he tried to scream, but there was no strength in him. Mouth yawning open ina soundless shriek, he went limp against the tree. He barely heard the inhuman screech that filled his ears.
    Â 
    A trembling Finley pulled up his horse.
    He didn’t want to enter that glade. A moment before, Corcoran’s two horses had come bursting out of it and passed him, their eyes mad with terror. He wanted to turn and follow their frenzied gallop across the meadow. The scream still seemed to ring in his ears—a sound the like of which he had never heard in all his life.
    Only after a long while could he force the shuddering mare to enter the glade.
    It seemed to be deserted. No tall figure stood there waiting for him; there was no sign of Al Corcoran. Finley sat stiffly on the fidgeting horse, his eyes moving over the silence of the glade.
    Then he saw the pieces.

8
    T hirty minutes before he saw the low line of Picture City’s buildings in the distance, Professor Albert Dodge knew in a flash of angry revelation that he was going back to Connecticut.
    He’d had enough, more than enough. Odd that it took this last abortive foray into the hills to make him realize it. God knew the disenchantment had been mounting for at least a year. Perhaps this last, frustrating trip was a disguised blessing.
    Under the circumstances, he wasn’t sure who was more of an idiot—“Appleface” Kelly or himself for believing Kelly. “Oh, yes, sir, Perfessor. There is sure as hell some broken pots out there, some bones, too.” Dodge could hear the man’s assured voice repeated in his memory. “Moron,” he muttered. He’d soon discovered that the pot shards were dry clay formations and the bones leftovers from wild animal kills.
    Then it had begun to rain.
    Rain? he thought irascibly. More like horseback riding underneath a waterfall. In less than twenty seconds he’d been drenched. No shelter at first. He’d tried to stop beneath the overhang of a piñon tree. That had been a waste of time. After several minutes of that, he’d been forced to move on, the rain alternately coming straight down on top of him or blowing into his face with the violence of buckets of water flung at him by some deranged antagonist.
    On top of that, his horse had slipped and