by Unknown
"A light! A light!" someone yelled.
"Moir, you have matches, matches!"
"No, I have none. Deacon, where are the matches! For God's sake the matches!"
"I can't find them. Here, you Frenchman, stop it!"
"It is beyond me. Oh, mon Dieu, I cannot stop it. The door! Where is the door?"
My hand, by good luck, lit upon the handle as I groped about in the darkness. The hard-breathing, snorting, rushing creature tore past me and butted with a fearful crash against the oaken partition. The instant that it had passed I turned the handle, and next moment we were all outside, and the door shut behind us. From within came a horrible crashing and rending and stamping.
"What is it? In heaven's name, what is it?"
"A horse. I saw it when the door opened. But Mrs. Delamere– ?"
"We must fetch her out. Come on, Markham, the longer we wait the less we shall like it."
He flung open the door and we rushed in. She was there on the ground amidst the splinters of her chair. We seized her and dragged her swiftly out, and as we gained the door I looked over my shoulder into the darkness. There were two strange eyes glowing at us, a rattle of hoofs, and I had just time to slam the door when there came a crash upon it which split it from top to bottom.
"It's coming through! It's coming!"
"Run, run for your lives!" cried the Frenchman. Another crash, and something shot through the riven door. It was a long white spike, gleaming in the lamplight. For a moment it shone before us, and then with a snap it disappeared again.
"Quick! Quick! This way!" Harvey Deacon shouted. "Carry her in! Here! Quick!"
We had taken refuge in the dining-room, and shut the heavy oak door. We laid the senseless woman upon the sofa, and as we did so, Moir, the hard man of business, drooped and fainted across the hearthrug. Harvey Deacon was as white as a corpse, jerking and twitching like an epileptic. With a crash we heard the studio door fly to pieces, and the snorting and stamping were in the passage, up and down, up and down, shaking the house with their fury. The Frenchman had sunk, his face on his hands, and sobbed like a frightened child.
"What shall we do?" I shook him roughly by the shoulder. "Is a gun any use?"
"No, no. The power will pass. Then it will end."
"You might have killed us all – you unspeakable fool – with your infernal experiments."
"I did not know. How could I tell that it would be frightened? It is mad with terror. It was his fault. He struck it."
Harvey Deacon sprang up. "Good heavens!" he cried. A terrible scream sounded through the house.
"It's my wife! Here, I'm going out. If it's the Evil One himself I am going out!"
He had thrown open the door and rushed out into the passage. At the end of it, at the foot of the stairs, Mrs. Deacon was lying senseless, struck down by the sight which she had seen. But there was nothing else.
With eyes of horror we looked about us, but all was perfectly quiet and still. I approached the black square of the studio door, expecting with every slow step that some atrocious shape would hurl itself out of it. But nothing came, and all was silent inside the room. Peeping and peering, our hearts in our mouths, we came to the very threshold, and stared into the darkness. There was still no sound, but in one direction there was also no darkness. A luminous, glowing cloud, with an incandescent centre, hovered in the corner of the room. Slowly it dimmed and faded, growing thinner and fainter, until at last the same dense velvety blackness filled the whole studio. And with the last flickering gleam of that baleful light the Frenchman broke into a shout of joy.
"What a fun!" he cried. "No one is hurt, and only the door broken, and the ladies frightened. But, my friends, we have done what has never been done before."
"And as far as I can help," said Harvey Deacon, "it will certainly never be done again."
And that was what befell on the 14th of April last at No. 17 Badderly Gardens. I began by saying that it would seem too grotesque to dogmatise as to what it was which actually did occur; but I give my impressions, our impressions (since they are corroborated by Harvey Deacon and John Moir), for what they are worth. You may, if it pleases you, imagine that we were the victims of an elaborate and extraordinary hoax. Or you may think with us that we underwent a very real and a very terrible experience. Or perhaps you may know more than we do of such occult matters, and can inform us of some similar occurence. In this latter case a letter to William Markham, 146M, The Albany, would help to throw a light upon that which is very dark to us.
Finis
SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, HORROR
IN PAGETURNER EDITIONS
A Martian Odyssey – Stanley G. Weinbaum
A Yank at Valhalla – Edmond Hamilton
Buck Rogers #1: Armageddon 2419 A.D. – Philip Francis Nowlan
Chaka: Zulu King – Book I. The Curse of Baleka – H. R. Haggard
Chaka: Zulu King – Book II. Umpslopogass' Revenge– H. R. Haggard
Claimed! – Francis Stevens
Darby O'Gill – Hermine Templeton
Dracula's Daughters – Ed. Jean Marie Stine
From Beyond & 16 Other Macabre Masterpieces – H. P. Lovecraft
Future Eves: Classic Science Fiction About Women by Women – (ed) Jean Marie Stine
House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Inside Man & Other Science Fictions – H. L. Gold
Ki-Gor, Lord of the Jungle – John Peter Drummond
Lost Stars: Forgotten Science Fiction from the "Best of" Anthologies – ed. J. M. Stine
Metropolis – Thea von Harbou
Nightmare! A Tale of Waking Terror – Francis Stevens
Possessed! – Francis Stevens
Rat in the Skull & Other Off-Trail Science Fiction – Rog Philllips
Scout – Octavio Ramos, Jr.
Smoke Signals – Octavio Ramos, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Cosmic Wheel – J. D. Crayne
The Ghost Pirates – W. H. Hodgson
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
The Insidious Fu Manchu – Sax Rohmer
The Interplanetary Huntress – Arthur K. Barnes
The Interplanetary Huntress Returns – Arthur K. Barnes
The Interplanetary Huntress Last Case – Arthur K. Barnes
The Involuntary Immortals – Rog Phillips
The Return of Fu Manchu – Sax Rohmer
The Return of Tarzan – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Star Kings – Edmond Hamilton
The Thief of Bagdad – Achmed Abdullah
This Island Earth – Raymond F. Jones
Women of the Wood and Other Stories – A. Merritt
Visit us at http://renebooks.com
