Genre Horror. Page - 7

w seemed ridiculously dim by contrast with the tremendous blaze of the flash-power.... And then, as I stooped forward, staring and listening, there came the crashing thud of the door of the Grey Room. The sound seemed to fill the whole of the large corridor, and go echoing hollowly through the house. I tell you, I felt horrible--as if my bones were water. Simply beastly. Jove! how I did stare, and how I listened. And then it came again--thud, thud, thud, and then a silence that was almost worse than the noise of the door; for I kept fancying that some awful thing was stealing upon me along the corridor. And then, suddenly, my lamp was put out, and I could not see a yard before me. I realized all at once that I was doing a very silly thing, sitting there, and I jumped up. Even as I did so, I thought I heard a sound in the passage, and quite near me. I made one backward spring into my room, and slammed and locked the door. I sat on my bed, and stared at the door. I had my revolver in my hand;

their own business; every moment the strain on the nerves increased.

Out of the gloomy dining-room they passed through large folding doors into a sort of library or smoking-room, wrapt equally in silence, darkness, and dust; and from this they regained the hall near the top of the back stairs.

Here a pitch black tunnel opened before them into the lower regions, and--it must be confessed--they hesitated. But only for a minute. With the worst of the night still to come it was essential to turn from nothing. Aunt Julia stumbled at the top step of the dark descent, ill lit by the flickering candle, and even Shorthouse felt at least half the decision go out of his legs.

"Come on!" he said peremptorily, and his voice ran on and lost itself in the dark, empty spaces below.

"I'm coming," she faltered, catching his arm with unnecessary violence.

They went a little unsteadily down the stone steps, a cold, damp air meeting them in the face, close and mal-odorous. The kitchen, into whic

I had been taught, all my courage, not to collapse in a paroxysm of fright.

And now a perfect tornado burst upon me. The ground shook as though thousands of horses thundered across it; and this time the storm bore on its icy wings, not snow, but great hailstones which drove with such violence that they might have come from the thongs of Balearic slingers--hailstones that beat down leaf and branch and made the shelter of the cypresses of no more avail than though their stems were standing-corn. At the first I had rushed to the nearest tree; but I was soon fain to leave it and seek the only spot that seemed to afford refuge, the deep Doric doorway of the marble tomb. There, crouching against the massive bronze door, I gained a certain amount of protection from the beating of the hailstones, for now they only drove against me as they ricocheted from the ground and the side of the marble.

As I leaned against the door, it moved slightly and opened inwards. The shelter of even a tomb was welcome in t

ght for it; and so we waited. I had, I felt, gained an advantage in the last few seconds, for I knew my danger and understood the situation. Now, I thought, is the test of my courage-the enduring test: the fighting test may come later!

The old woman raised her head and said to me in a satisfied kind of way:

"A very fine ring, indeed-a beautiful ring! Oh, me! I once had such rings, plenty of them, and bracelets and earrings! Oh! for in those fine days I led the town a dance! But they've forgotten me now! They've forgotten me! They? Why they never heard of me! Perhaps their grandfathers remember me, some of them!" and she laughed a harsh, croaking laugh. And then I am bound to say that she astonished me, for she handed me back the ring with a certain suggestion of old-fashioned grace which was not without its pathos.

The old man eyed her with a sort of sudden ferocity, half rising from his stool, and said to me suddenly and hoarsely:

"Let me see!"

I was about to hand the ring

exactly as it stands, beginning at page three of theblood-soaked note-book:

"Nevertheless, when I dined at Rheims with Coselli and GustavRaymond I found that neither of them was aware of any particulardanger in the higher layers of the atmosphere. I did not actuallysay what was in my thoughts, but I got so near to it that if theyhad any corresponding idea they could not have failed to expressit. But then they are two empty, vainglorious fellows with nothought beyond seeing their silly names in the newspaper. It isinteresting to note that neither of them had ever been much beyondthe twenty-thousand-foot level. Of course, men have been higherthan this both in balloons and in the ascent of mountains. Itmust be well above that point that the aeroplane enters the dangerzone--always presuming that my premonitions are correct.

"Aeroplaning has been with us now for more than twenty years,and one might well ask: Why should this peril be only revealingitself in our day? The answer is obvious.

thegreater part of their rent, which had been paid in advance. Theevidence of Mr. H---- himself, of his butler, and of several guests,will be found in due chronological sequence.

* * * * *

When Colonel Taylor, one of the fundamental members of the LondonSpiritualist Alliance, a distinguished member of the S.P.R., whosename is associated both in this country and in America with theinvestigation of haunted houses, offered to take a lease of B----House, after the lease had been resigned by Mr. H----, the proprietormade no objection whatever. Indeed, the only allusion made to thehaunting was the expression of a hope on the part of Captain S----'sagents in Edinburgh, that Colonel Taylor would not make it a subjectof complaint, as had been done by Mr. H----, in reply to which theywere informed that Colonel Taylor was thoroughly well aware of whathad happened during Mr. H----'s tenancy, and would undertake to makeno complaint on the subject. Captain S---- having th

ren't made for human beings, and their size bothered us. Anyway, it was devilish heavy. We had to have the Americans down to get It out. They weren't anxious to go into the place, but of course the worst thing was safely inside the box. We told them it was a batch of ivory carving--archeological stuff; and after seeing the carved throne they probably believed us. It's a wonder they didn't suspect hidden treasure and demand a share. They must have told queer tales around Nome later on; though I doubt if they ever went back to those ruins, even for the ivory throne."

Rogers paused, felt around in his desk, and produced an envelope of good-sized photographic prints. Extracting one and laying it face down before him, he handed the rest to Jones. The set was certainly an odd one: ice-clad hills, dog sledges, men in furs, and vast tumbled ruins against a background of snow--ruins whose bizarre outlines and enormous stone blocks could hardly be accounted for. One flashlight view showed an incredible interior

interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. One man with Oriental eyes has said that all time and space are relative, and men have laughed. But even that man with Oriental eyes has done no more than suspect. I had wished and tried to do more than suspect, and my friend had tried and partly succeeded. Then we both tried together, and with exotic drugs courted terrible and forbidden dreams in the tower studio chamber of the old manor-house in hoary Kent.

Among the agonies of these after days is that chief of torments- inarticulateness. What I learned and saw in those hours of impious exploration can never be told- for want of symbols or suggestions in any language. I say this because from first to last our discoveries partook only of the nature of sensations; sensations correlated with no impression which the nervous system of normal humanity is capable of receiving. They were sensations, yet within them lay unbelievable elements of time and space- things which at bottom possess no distinct and definite existence. Human utterance can best convey the general character of our experiences by calling them plungings or soarings; for in every period of revelation some part of our minds broke boldly away from all that is real and present, rushing aerially along shocking, unlighted, and fear-haunted abysses,

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood
The Shadows On The Wall by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
The Messenger by Robert W. Chambers
Lazarus by Leonid Andreyev
The Beast With Five Fingers by W. F. Harvey
The Mass Of Shadows by Anatole France
What Was It? by Fitz-James O'Brien
The Middle Toe Of The Right Foot by Ambrose Bierce
The Shell Of Sense by Olivia Howard Dunbar
The Woman At Seven Brothers by Wilbur Daniel Steele
At The Gate by Myla Jo Closser
Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe
The Haunted Orchard by Richard Le Gallienne
The Bowmen by Arthur Machen
A Ghost by Guy De Maupassant

lower part of which had been used for stables and carriage house, and the upper portion as quarters for the house slaves, in the old days. Another smaller building, slate-roofed and ivy covered, was the spring-house, with a clear, cold little spring still bubbling away as merrily in its granite basin, as if all the Hyndses were not dead and gone. And there was a deep well, protected by a round stone wall, with a cupola-like roof supported by four slender pillars. And everything was dank and weedy and splotched with mildew and with mold.

O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is Haunted!

When we opened the great front door, above which was the fan-light of Alicia's hope, just as the round front porch had the big pillars, a damp and moldy air met us. The house had not been opened since Sophronisba's funeral, and everything--stairs, settles, tables, cabinets, pictures, the chairs backed inhospitably