The Weird Tales - Horror & Macabre Ultimate Collection. Arthur Machen
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Название: The Weird Tales - Horror & Macabre Ultimate Collection

Автор: Arthur Machen

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 9788075833815

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СКАЧАТЬ I can't say I heard anything. But I believe that old places like this are like shells from the shore, ever echoing with noises. The old beams, mouldering piecemeal, yield a little and groan, and such a house as this I can fancy all resonant at night with voices, the voices of matter so slowly and so surely transformed into other shapes; the voice of the worm that gnaws at last the very heart of the oak; the voice of stone grinding on stone, and the voice of the conquest of time."

      They sat still in the old armchairs and grew graver in the musty ancient air,—the air of a hundred years ago.

      "I don't like the place," said Phillipps, after a long pause. "To me it seems, as if there were a sickly, unwholesome smell about it, a smell of something burning."

      "You are right; there is an evil odor here. I wonder what it is! Hark! Did you hear that?"

      A hollow sound, a noise of infinite sadness and infinite pain broke in upon the silence; and the two men looked fearfully at one another, horror and the sense of unknown things glimmering in their eyes.

      "Come," said Dyson, "we must see into this," and they went into the hall and listened in the silence.

      "Do you know," said Phillipps, "it seems absurd, but I could almost fancy that the smell is that of burning flesh."

      They went up the hollow-sounding stairs, and the the odor became thick and noisome, stifling the breath; and a vapor, sickening as the smell of the chamber of death, choked them. A door was open and they entered the large upper room, and clung hard to one another, shuddering at the sight they saw.

      A naked man was lying on the floor, his arms and legs stretched wide apart, and bound to pegs that had been hammered into the boards. The body was torn and mutilated in the most hideous fashion, scarred with the marks of red-hot irons, a shameful ruin of the human shape. But upon the middle of the body a fire of coals was smouldering; the flesh had been burned through. The man was dead, but the smoke of his torment mounted still, a black vapor.

      "The young man with spectacles," said Mr. Dyson.

       THE END.

      The Terror

       Table of Contents

       Chapter I. The Coming of the Terror

       Chapter II. Death in the Village

       Chapter III. The Doctors Theory

       Chapter IV. The Spread of the Terror

       Chapter V. The Incident of the Unknown Tree

       Chapter VI. Mr. Remnant's Z Ray

       Chapter VII. The Case of the Hidden Germans

       Chapter VIII. What Mr. Merritt Found

       Chapter IX. The Light on the Water

       Chapter X. The Child and the Moth

       Chapter XI. At Treff Loyne Farm

       Chapter XII. The Letter of Wrath

       Chapter XIII. The Last Words of Mr. Secretan

       Chapter XIV. The End of the Terror

      Chapter I

       The Coming of the Terror

       Table of Contents

      After two years we are turning once more to the morning's news with a sense of appetite and glad expectation. There were thrills at the beginning of the war; the thrill of horror and of a doom that seemed at once incredible and certain; this was when Namur fell and the German host swelled like a flood over the French fields, and drew very near to the walls of Paris. Then we felt the thrill of exultation when the good news came that the awful tide had been turned back, that Paris and the world were safe; for awhile at all events.

      Then for days we hoped for more news as good as this or better. Has Von Kluck been surrounded? Not to-day, but perhaps he will be surrounded to-morrow. But the days became weeks, the weeks drew out to months; the battle in the West seemed frozen. Now and again things were done that seemed hopeful, with promise of events still better. But Neuve Chapelle and Loos dwindled into disappointments as their tale was told fully; the lines in the West remained, for all practical purposes of victory, immobile. Nothing seemed to happen; there was nothing to read save the record of operations that were clearly trifling and insignificant. People speculated as to the reason of this inaction; the hopeful said that Joffre had a plan, that he was "nibbling," others declared that we were short of munitions, others again that the new levies were not yet ripe for battle. So the months went by, and almost two years of war had been completed before the motionless English line began to stir and quiver as if it awoke from a long sleep, and began to roll onward, overwhelming the enemy.

      The secret of the long inaction of the British Armies has been well kept. On the one hand it was rigorously protected by the censorship, which severe, and sometimes severe to the point of absurdity—"the captains and the ... depart," for instance—became in this particular matter ferocious. As soon as the real significance of that which was happening, or beginning to happen, was perceived by the authorities, an underlined circular was issued to the newspaper proprietors of Great Britain and Ireland. It warned each proprietor that he might impart the contents of this circular to one other person only, such person being the responsible editor of his paper, who was to keep the communication secret under the severest penalties. The circular forbade any mention of certain events that had taken place, that might take place; it forbade any kind of allusion to these events or any hint of their existence, or of the possibility of their existence, not only in the Press, but in any form whatever. The subject was not to be alluded to in conversation, it was not to be hinted at, however obscurely, in letters; the very existence of the circular, its subject apart, was to be a dead secret.

      These measures were successful. A wealthy newspaper proprietor of the North, warmed a little at the end of the Throwsters' Feast (which was held as usual, it will СКАЧАТЬ