Free The Fellowship of the Talisman by Clifford D. Simak

said Duncan. “You mean an oak fell upon the tomb? There was a cemetery just the other day.”
    â€œPlease tell me,” said Diane, “about this oak and tomb.”
    â€œWe passed through a cemetery,” Duncan said. “Just a mile or so from here. There was a tomb and a tree had fallen on it. Quite some time ago, it seemed. It still is there, lying across the tomb. The slab covering the tomb had been shoved aside and broken. I wondered at the time why no one had repaired it.”
    â€œIt’s an old burial ground,” Andrew explained. “Not used for years. No one bothered. And there may not have been many people who would know who was buried there.”
    â€œYou think this might be the tomb of Wulfert?” Diane asked.
    â€œThe shame of it!” wailed the hermit. “That such be placed in holy ground. But the people did not know, the people of the village had no way to know. Of this Wulfert I have heard. A holy man, it was said of him, who sought refuge from the world in this lonely place.”
    Duncan asked Diane, “Is this the information that you …”
    And then he stopped, for there was something wrong. A sudden silence—and that was strange, for there had been no sound before, nothing but the background sound of insects and birds, an ever-present sound one grew so accustomed to hearing that it went unnoticed. And that was it, thought Duncan—the sudden silence was the absence of that background sound. The sudden silence and the strange feeling of expectancy, as if one were tensed for something that was about to happen, not knowing what it was, but rocking forward on the toes to be ready for it.
    The others had noticed the silence and perhaps the expectancy as well, for they were frozen in their places, tensed and listening and watchful.
    Duncan’s hand lifted slowly and his fingers wrapped about the hilt of his sword, but he did not draw it, for there was as yet no solid evidence of danger. But the sense of danger still hung heavy in the air. Diane, he saw, had half lifted the battle axe she held. The griffin had shifted its position and its eagle head was pivoting slowly from one side to the other.
    Bushes stirred on the far perimeter of the garden plot and a figure half emerged: a round head, superficially human, thrust forward on a short, almost nonexistent neck set between massive shoulders. Bald—the head bald, the shoulders bald, no trace of hair, not like something that had shaved its hair, but rather something that had never grown hair.
    The hairless one, Duncan told himself, the hairless ones the Reaver had told him of that night they stopped at the manor house. Great, white, hairless human slugs that fell short of being human.
    The sword rasped as he cleared it. He slashed it in the air and the sun glistened off it as he made the symbolic slash.
    â€œNow we’ll see,” he said, speaking half to himself, half to the Reaver, who had told him of these creatures.
    The hairless one rose to full height, emerging from the bushes. It stood a little taller than an ordinary man, but not as tall as the Reaver had led him to believe. It stood on bowed legs, bent forward at the knees, and shambled as it walked. It wore not a stitch of clothing, and the fish white of its bulging torso shone in the sunlight. In one hand it carried a huge knotted club. The club was held nonchalantly, its head pointing toward the ground, as if the club were an extension of its arm.
    Behind it were others, stepping out from the trees and bushes to array themselves beside the first. They stood in a ragged line, their round heads thrust forward, tiny eyes beneath bald and jutting brows looking with an interested but contemptuous gaze at those who stood in the garden patch.
    They shambled forward, slowly, awkwardly, then suddenly, with no indication they intended to do anything but shamble, they charged, coming in great leaps through the weeds. Their clubs were no