 Herbert West Reanimator Part 5 The Horror From The Shadows by H. P. Lovecraft This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Francesca Remick Many men have related hideous things, not mentioned in print, which happened on the battlefields of the Great War. Some of these things have made me faint. Others have convulsed me with devastating nausea, while still others have made me tremble and look behind me in the dark. Yet despite the worst of them, I believe I can myself relate the most hideous thing of all, the shocking, the unnatural, the unbelievable horror from the shadows. In 1915 I was a physician with the rank of first lieutenant in a Canadian regiment in Flanders, one of many Americans to proceed the government itself into the gigantic struggle. I had not entered the army of my own initiative, but rather as a natural result of the enlistment of the man whose indispensable assistant I was, the celebrated Boston surgical specialist, Dr. Herbert West. Dr. West had been avid for a chance to serve as a surgeon in a Great War, and when the chance had come he carried me with him almost against my will. There were reasons why I could have been glad to let the war separate us, reasons why I found the practice of medicine and the companionship of West more and more irritating. But when he had gone to Ottawa and through a colleague's influence secured a medical commission as major, I could not resist the imperious persuasion of one determined that I should accompany him in my usual capacity. When I say that Dr. West was avid to serve in battle, I do not mean to imply that he was either naturally war-like or anxious for the safety of civilization, always an ice-cold, intellectual machine, slight, blond, blue-eyed and spectacled. I think he secretly sneered at my occasional martial enthousiasms and sensuous of supine neutrality. There was, however, something he wanted in embattled Flanders, and in order to secure it had had to assume a military exterior. What he wanted was not a thing which many persons want, but something connected with the peculiar branch of medical science which he had chosen quite clandestinely to follow, and in which he had achieved amazing and occasionally hideous results. It was, in fact, nothing more or less than an abundant supply of freshly killed men in every stage of dismemberment. Herbert West needed fresh bodies because his life work was the reanimation of the dead. This work was not known to the fashionable Cleontel, who had so swiftly built up his fame after his arrival in Boston, but was only too well known to me, who had been his closest friend and sole assistant since the old days in Miskatonic University Medical School at Arkham. It was in those college days that he had begun his terrible experiments, first on small animals and then on human bodies, shockingly obtained. There was a solution which he injected into the veins of dead things, and if they were fresh enough, they responded in strange ways. He had much trouble in discovering the proper formula, for each type of organism was found to need a stimulus especially adapted to it. Terror stalked him when he reflected on his partial failures, nameless things resulting from imperfect solutions or from bodies insufficiently fresh. A certain number of these failures had remained alive. One was in an asylum while others had vanished, and as he thought of conceivable yet virtually impossible eventualities, he often shivered beneath his usual stolidity. West had soon learned that absolute freshness was the prime requisite for useful specimens and had accordingly resorted to frightful and unnatural expedience in body snatching. In college and during our early practice together in the factory town of Bolton, my attitude toward him had been largely one of fascinated admiration, but as his boldness in methods grew, I began to develop annoying fear. I did not like the way he looked at healthy, living bodies. And then there came a nightmarish session in the cellar laboratory when I learned that a certain specimen had been a living body when he secured it. That was the first time he had ever been able to revive the quality of rational thought in a corpse, and his success obtained at such a loathsome cost had completely hardened him. Of his methods in the intervening five years I dare not speak. I was held to him by sheer force of fear and witnessed sights that no human tongue could repeat. Gradually I came to find Herbert West himself more horrible than anything he did. That was when it dawned on me that his once normal scientific zeal for prolonging life had subtly degenerated into a mere morbid and ghoulish curiosity and secret sense of charnel picturesqueness. His interest became a hellish and perverse addiction to the repellently and fiendishly abnormal. He gloated calmly over artificial monstrosities which would make most healthy men drop dead from fright and disgust. He became, behind his pallid intellectuality, a fastidious baudelaire of physical experiment, a languid iligabalus of the tombs. Dangers he met unflinchingly, crimes he committed unmoved. I think the climax came when he had proved his point that rational life can be restored and had sought new worlds to conquer by experimenting on the reanimation of detached parts of bodies. He had wild and original ideas on the independent vital properties of organic cells and nerve tissue separated from natural physiological systems and achieved some hideous preliminary results in the form of never dying artificially nourished tissue obtained from the nearly hatched eggs of an indescribable tropical reptile. Two biological points he was exceedingly anxious to settle. First, whether any amount of consciousness and rational action be possible without the brain, proceeding from the spinal cord and various nerve centers. And second, whether any kind of ethereal, intangible relation distinct from the material cells may exist to link the surgically separated parts of what had previously been a single living organism. All this research work required a prodigious supply of freshly slaughtered human flesh and that was why Herbert West had entered the Great War. The phantasmal unmentionable thing occurred one midnight late in March 1915 in a field hospital behind the lines of St. Elois. I wonder even now if it could have been other than a demonic dream of delirium. West had a private laboratory in an east room of the barn-like temporary edifice assigned him on his plea that he was devising new and radical methods for the treatment of hitherto hopeless cases of maiming. There he worked like a butcher in the midst of his gory wares. I could never get used to the levity with which he handled and classified certain things. At times he actually did perform marvels of surgery for the soldiers but his chief delights were of a less public and philanthropic kind requiring many explanations of sounds which seemed peculiar even amidst that babble of the damned. Among these sounds were frequent revolver shots, surely not uncommon on a battlefield but distinctly uncommon in a hospital. Dr West's reanimated specimens were not meant for long existence or a large audience. Besides human tissue, West employed much of the reptile embryo tissue which he had cultivated with such singular results. It was better than human material for maintaining life in organ-less fragments and that was now my friend's chief activity in a dark corner of the laboratory over a queer incubating burner. He kept a large covered vat full of this reptilian cell matter which multiplied and grew puffily and hideously. On the night of which I speak we had a splendid new specimen, a man at once physically powerful and of such high mentality that a sensitive nervous system was assured. It was rather ironic for he was the officer who had helped West to his commission and who was now to have been our associate. Moreover, he had in the past secretly studied the theory of reanimation to some extent under West. Major Sir Eric Moreland Clapham Lee, DSO, was the greatest surgeon in our division and had been hastily assigned to the St. Eloise sector when news of the heavy fighting reached headquarters. He had come in an aeroplane piloted by the intrepid Lieutenant Ronald Hill only to be shot down when directly over his destination. The fall had been spectacular and awful. Hill was unrecognisable afterwards but the wreck yielded up the great surgeon in a nearly decapitated but otherwise intact condition. West had greedily seized the lifeless thing which had once been his friend and fellow scholar and I shuddered when he finished severing the head placed it in his hellish vat of pulpy reptile tissue to preserve it for future experiments and proceeded to treat the decapitated body on the operating table. He injected new blood, joined certain veins, arteries and nerves at the headless neck and closed the ghastly aperture within grafted skin from an unidentified specimen which had borne an officer's uniform. I knew what he wanted. To see if this highly organised body could exhibit without its head any of the signs of mental life which had distinguished Sir Eric Moreland Clapham Lee once a student of reanimation this silent trunk was now gruesomely called upon to exemplify it. I can still see Herbert West under the sinister electric light as he injected his reanimating solution into the arm of the headless body. The scene I cannot describe. I should faint if I tried it for there is a madness in a room full of classified charnel things with blood and lesser human debris almost ankle deep on the slimy floor and with hideous reptilian abnormalities sprouting, bubbling and baking over a winking bluish-green spectre of dim flame in a far corner of black shadows. The specimen as West repeatedly observed had a splendid nervous system much was expected of it and a few twitching motions began to appear. I could see the feverish interest on West's face. He was ready I think to see proof of his increasingly strong opinion that consciousness, reason and personality can exist independently of the brain that man has no central connective spirit but is merely a machine of nervous matter each section more or less complete in itself. In one triumphant demonstration West was about to relegate the mystery of life to the category of myth. The body now twitched more vigorously and beneath our avid eyes commenced to heave in a frightful way. The arms stirred disquietingly. The legs drew up and various muscles contracted in a repulsive kind of writhing. Then the headless thing threw out its arms in a gesture which was unmistakably one of desperation an intelligent desperation apparently sufficient to prove every theory of Herbert West. Certainly the nerves were recalling the man's last act in life the struggle to get free of the falling aeroplane. What followed I shall never positively know. It may have been wholly a hallucination from the shock caused at that instant by the sudden and complete destruction of the building in a cataclysm of German shellfire. Who can gain say it since West and I were the only proved survivors? West liked to think that before his recent disappearance but there were times when he could not for it was queer that we both had the same hallucination. The hideous occurrence itself was very simple notable only for what it implied. The body on the table had risen with a blind and terrible groping and we had heard a sound. I should not call that sound a voice for it was too awful and yet its timbre was not the most awful thing about it. Neither was its message. It had merely screamed jump Ronald for God's sake jump. The awful thing was its source for it had come from the large covered vat in that ghoulish corner of crawling black shadows. End of Herbert West Reanimator Part 5 The Horror from the Shadows Recording by Francesca Remick Guernsey Herbert West Reanimator Part 6 The Tomb Legions by H. P. Lovecraft This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Francesca Remick When Dr Herbert West disappeared a year ago the Boston police questioned me closely. They suspected that I was holding something back and perhaps suspected graver things but I could not tell them the truth because they would not have believed it. They knew indeed that West had been connected with activities beyond the credence of ordinary men for his hideous experiments in the reanimation of dead bodies had long been too extensive to admit of perfect secrecy. But the final soul-shattering catastrophe had elements of demonic fantasy which make even me doubt the reality of what I saw. I was West's closest friend and only confidential assistant. We had met years before in medical school and from the first I had shared his terrible researches. He had slowly tried to perfect a solution which injected into the veins of the newly deceased would restore life. A labour demanding an abundance of fresh corpses and therefore involving the most unnatural actions. Still more shocking were the products of some of the experiments. Grizzly masses of flesh that had been dead but that West waked to a blind, brainless, nauseous animation. These were the usual results for in order to reawaken the mind it was necessary to have specimens so absolutely fresh that no decay could possibly affect the delicate brain cells. This need for very fresh corpses had been West's moral undoing. They were hard to get and one awful day he had secured his specimen while it was still alive and vigorous. A struggle, a needle and a powerful alkaloid had transformed it to a very fresh corpse and the experiment had succeeded for a brief and memorable moment but West had emerged with a soul calloused and seared and a hardened eye which sometimes glanced with a kind of hideous and calculating appraisal at men of a specially sensitive brain especially vigorous physique. Toward the last I became acutely afraid of West for he began to look at me that way. People did not seem to notice his glances but they noticed my fear and after his disappearance used that as a basis for some absurd suspicions. West in reality was more afraid than I his abominable pursuits entailed a life of vertiveness and dread of every shadow. Partly it was the police he feared but sometimes his nervousness was deeper and more nebulous touching on certain indescribable things into which he had injected a morbid life and from which he had not seen that life depart. He usually finished his experiments with a revolver but a few times he had not been quick enough. There was that first specimen on whose rifled grave marks of clawing were later seen. There was also that Arkham Professor's body which had done cannibal things before it had been captured and thrust unidentified into a madhouse cell at Sefton where it beat the wall for 16 years. Most of the other possibly surviving results were things less easy to speak of for in later years West's scientific zeal had degenerated to an unhealthy and fantastic mania and he had spent his chief skill in vitalising not entire human bodies but isolated parts of bodies or parts joined to organic matter other than human. It had become fiendishly disgusting by the time he disappeared. Many of the experiments could not even be hinted at in print the great war through which both of us served as surgeons had intensified this side of West. In saying that West's fear of his specimens was nebulous I have in mind particularly its complex nature. Part of it came merely from knowing of the existence of such nameless monsters while another part arose from apprehension of the bodily harm they might under certain circumstances do him. Their disappearance added horror to the situation. Of them all West knew the whereabouts of only one the pitiful asylum thing. Then there was a more subtle fear a very fantastic sensation resulting from a curious experiment in the Canadian Army in 1915. West in the midst of a severe battle had reanimated major Sir Eric Moorland Clapham Lee DSO a fellow physician who knew about his experiments and could have duplicated them. The head had been removed so that the possibilities of quasi-intelligent life in the trunk might be investigated. Just as the building was wiped out by a German shell there had been a success. The trunk had moved intelligently and unbelievable to relate we were both sickeningly sure that articulate sounds had come from the detached head as it lay in a shadowy corner of the laboratory. The shell had been merciful in a way but West could never feel as certain as he wished that we too were the only survivors. He used to make shuddering conjectures about the possible actions of a headless physician with the power of reanimating the dead. West's last quarters were in a venerable house of much elegance overlooking one of the oldest burying grounds in Boston. He had chosen the place for purely symbolic and fantastically aesthetic reasons since most of the interments were of the colonial period and therefore of little use to a scientist seeking very fresh bodies. The laboratory was in a sub-seller secretly constructed by imported workmen and contained a huge incinerator for the quiet and complete disposal of such bodies or fragments and synthetic mockeries of bodies as might remain from the morbid experiments and unhallowed amusements of the owner. During the excavation of this cellar the workmen had struck some exceedingly ancient masonry undoubtedly connected with the old burying ground yet far too deep to correspond with any known sepulchre therein. After a number of calculations West decided that it represented some secret chamber beneath the tomb of the avarils where the last interment had been made in 1768. I was with him when he studied the nitrous dripping walls laid bare by the spades and mattocks of the men and was prepared for the gruesome thrill which would attend the uncovering of centuryed grave secrets. But for the first time West's new timidity conquered his natural curiosity and he betrayed his degenerating fibre by ordering the masonry left intact and plastered over. Thus it remained till that final hellish night part of the walls of the secret laboratory. I speak of West's decadence but must add that it was a purely mental and intangible thing. Outwardly he was the same to the last calm, cold, slight and yellow-haired with spectacled blue eyes and a general aspect of youth which years and fears seemed never to change. He seemed calm even when he thought of that clawed grave and looked over his shoulder even when he thought of the carnivorous thing that gnawed and poured at Sefton bars. The end of Herbert West began one evening in our joint study when he was dividing his curious glance between the newspaper and me. A strange headline item had struck at him from the crumpled pages and a nameless, tightened claw had seemed to reach down through sixteen years. Something fearsome and incredible had happened at Sefton Asylum fifty miles away stunning the neighbourhood and baffling the police. In the small hours of the morning a body of silent men had entered the grounds and their leader had aroused the attendance. He was a menacing military figure who talked without moving his lips and whose voice seemed almost ventriloquily connected with an immense black case he carried. His expressionless face was handsome to the point of radiant beauty but had shocked the superintendent when the whole light fell on it. For it was a wax face with eyes of painted glass. Some nameless accident had befallen this man. A larger man guided his steps. A repellent hulk whose bluish face seemed half eaten away by some unknown malady. The speaker had asked for the custody of the cannibal monster committed from Arkham sixteen years before and upon being refused gave a signal which precipitated a shocking riot. The fiends had beaten, trampled and bitten every attendant who did not flee killing four and finally succeeding in the liberation of the monster. Those victims who could recall the event without hysteria swore that the creatures had acted less like men than like unthinkable automata guided by the wax-faced leader. By the time help could be summoned every trace of the men and of their mad charge had vanished. From the hour of reading this item until midnight West sat almost paralyzed. At midnight the doorbell rang startling him fearfully. All the servants were asleep in the attic so I answered the bell. As I have told the police there was no wagon in the street but only a group of strange-looking figures bearing a large square box which they deposited in the hallway after one of them had grunted in a highly unnatural voice. Express prepaid. They filed out of the house with a jerky tread and as I watched them go I had an odd idea that they were turning toward the ancient cemetery on which the back of the house abutted. When I slammed the door after them West came downstairs and looked at the box. It was about two feet square and bore West's correct name and present address. It also bore the inscription from Eric Moorland Clapham Lee St. Eloire Flanders. Six years before in Flanders a shelled hospital had fallen upon the headless reanimated trunk of Dr. Clapham Lee and upon the detached head which perhaps had uttered articulate sounds. West was not even excited now. His condition was more ghastly. Quickly he said it's the finish but let's incinerate this. We carried the thing down to the laboratory listening. I do not remember many particulars but you can imagine my state of mind. But it is a vicious lie to say it was Herbert West's body which I put into the incinerator. We both inserted the whole unopened wooden box closed the door and started the electricity nor did any sound come from the box after all. It was West who first noticed the falling plaster on that part of the wall with the ancient tomb masonry had been covered up. I was going to run but he stopped me. Then I saw a small black aperture felt a ghoulish wind of ice and smelled the charnel bowels of a putrescent earth. There was no sound but just then the electric lights went out and I saw outlined against some phosphorescence of the netherworld a horde of silent toiling things which only insanity or worse could create. Their outlines were human, semi-human, fractionally human and not human at all. The horde was grotesquely heterogeneous. They were removing the stones quietly one by one from the centuried wall and then as the breach became large enough they came out into the laboratory in single file led by a talking thing with a beautiful head made of wax a sort of mad-eyed monstrosity behind the leader seized on Herbert West. West did not resist or utter a sound. Then they all sprang at him and tore him to pieces before my eyes bearing the fragments away into that subterranean vault of fabulous abominations. West's head was carried off by the wax-headed leader who wore a Canadian officer's uniform. As it disappeared I saw that the blue eyes behind the spectacles were hideously blazing with their first touch of frantic, visible emotion. Servants found me unconscious in the morning. West was gone. The incinerator contained only unidentifiable ashes. Detectives have questioned me but what can I say? The sefton tragedy they will not connect with West nor that nor the men with the box whose existence they deny. I told them of the vault and they pointed to the unbroken plaster wall and laughed so I told them no more. They imply that I am either a madman or a murderer. Probably I am mad. But I might not be mad if those accursed tomb legions had not been so silent. End of Herbert West Reanimator Part 6 The Tomb Legions Recording by Francesca Remick Ganze The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Colleen McMahon The Hound by H.P. Lovecraft In my tortured ears there sounds unceasingly a nightmare wearing and flapping and a faint distant baying as of some gigantic hound. It is not dream. It is not, I fear, even madness for too much has already happened to give me these merciful doubts. Syngin is a mangled corpse. I alone know why. And such is my knowledge that I am about to blow out my brains for fear I shall be mangled in the same way. Down unlit and illimitable corridors of eldritch fantasy sweeps the black shapeless nemesis that drives me to self-annihilation. May heaven forgive the folly and morbidity that led us both to so monstrous a fate. Weiried with the common places of a prosaic world where even the joys of romance and adventure soon grow stale, Syngin and I had followed enthusiastically every aesthetic and intellectual movement which promised respite from our devastating ennui. The enigmas of the symbolists and the ecstasies of the pre-Raphaelites all were ours in their time but each new mood was drained too soon of its diverting novelty and appeal. Only the sombre philosophy of the decadence could hold us and this we found potent only by increasing gradually the depth and diabolism of our penetrations. Baudelaire and Heusmans were soon exhausted of thrills till finally they remained for us only the more direct stimuli of unnatural personal experiences and adventures. It was this frightful emotional need which led us eventually to that detestable course which even in my present fear I mention with shame and timidity the extremity of human outrage the abhorred practice of grave robbing. I cannot reveal the details of our shocking expeditions or catalogue even partly the worst of the trophies adorning the nameless museum we prepared in the great stone house where we jointly dwelt alone and servantless. Our museum was a blasphemous unthinkable place where with the satanic taste of neurotic virtuosy we had assembled a universe of terror and sensibilities. It was a secret room, far, far underground where huge winged demons carbon of basalt and onyx vomited from wide grinning mouths weird green and orange light and hidden pneumatic pipes ruffled into kaleidoscopic dances of death the lines of red charnel things hand in hand woven in voluminous black hangings. Through these pipes came at will the odors our moods most craved sometimes the scent of pale funeral lilies sometimes the narcotic incense of imagined eastern shrines of the kingly dead and sometimes, how I shudder to recall it, the frightful soul-upheaving stenches of the uncovered grave. Around the walls of this repellent chamber were cases of antique mummies alternating with comely lifelike bodies perfectly stuffed and cured by the taxidermis art and with headstones snatched from the oldest churchyards of the world niches here and there contained skulls of all shapes and heads preserved in various stages of dissolution. There one might find the rotting bald-pates of famous noblemen and the fresh and radiantly golden heads of newly buried children statues and paintings there were all of fiendish subjects and some executed by singin and myself a locked portfolio bound in tanned human skin held certain unknown and unnameable drawings which it was rumored Goya had perpetrated but dared not acknowledge. There were nauseous musical instruments stringed, brass and woodwind on which singin and I sometimes produced dissonances of exquisite morbidity and cacodemoniacal gasliness whilst in a multitude of inlaid ebony cabinets reposed the most incredible and unimaginable variety of tomb loot ever assembled by human madness and perversity. It is of this loot in particular that I must not speak. Thank God I had the courage to destroy it long before I thought of destroying myself. The predatory excursions on which we collected our unmentionable treasures were always artistically memorable events. We were no vulgar ghouls but worked only under certain conditions of mood, landscape, environment, weather, season and moonlight. These pastimes were to us the most exquisite form of aesthetic expression and we gave their details a fastidious technical care and inappropriate hour a jarring lighting effect or a clumsy manipulation of the damp sod would almost totally destroy for us that ecstatic titillation which followed the exhumation of some ominous grinning secret of the earth. Our quest for novel scenes and peaked conditions was feverish and insatiate. Singin was always the leader and it was he who led the way at last to that mocking that accursed spot which brought us the lion fatality where we lured to that terrible Holland's churchyard. I think it was the dark rumor and legendary, the tales of one buried for five centuries who had himself been a ghoul in his time and had stolen a potent thing from a mighty sepulcher. I can recall the scene in these final moments the pale autumnal moon over the graves casting long horrible shadows the grotesque trees drooping sullenly to meet the neglected grass and the crumbling slabs the vast legions of strangely colossal bats that flew against the moon the antique ivy church pointing a huge spectral finger at the livid sky the phosphorescent insects that danced like deathfires under the use in a distant corner the odors of mold, vegetation and less explicable things that mingled feebly with the night wind from over far swamps and seas and worst of all the faint deep toned bang of some gigantic hound neither sea nor definitely place as we heard the suggestion of bang we shuttered remembering the tales of the peasantry for he whom we sought had centuries before been found in this self same spot torn and mangled by the claws and teeth of some unspeakable beast I remembered how we delved in this ghoul's grave with our spades and how we thrilled at the picture of ourselves the grave, the pale watching moon the horrible shadows the grotesque trees the metallic bats the antique church the dancing deathfires the sickening odors the gently moaning night wind and the strange half-herd directionless baying of whose objective existence we could scarcely be sure then we struck a substance harder than the damp mold and beheld a rotting oblong box crusted with mineral deposits from the long undisturbed ground it was incredibly tough and thick we could open and feasted our eyes on what it held much, amazingly much was left of the object despite the lapse of 500 years the skeleton, though crushed in places by the jaws of the thing that had killed it, held together with surprising firmness and we gloated over the clean white skull and its long firm teeth and its eyeless sockets that had once glowed with a charnel fever like our own in the coffin lay an amulet of curious and exotic design which had apparently been worn around the sleeper's neck it was the oddly conventionalized figure of a crouching winged town, or Sphinx with a semi-canine face and was exquisitely carved in antique oriental fashion from a small piece of green jade the expression on its features was repellent in the extreme savoring at once of death bestiality and malevolence around the base was an inscription in characters which neither singe nor I could identify in the bottom, like a maker's seal was grave in a grotesque and formidable skull immediately upon beholding this amulet we knew that we must possess it that this treasure alone was our logical pelf from the centred grave even had its outlines been unfamiliar we would have desired it but as we looked more closely we saw that it was not wholly unfamiliar alien it indeed was to all art and literature which sane and balanced readers know it as the thing hinted of in the forbidden necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Ahasrat the ghastly soul symbol of the corpse eating cult of inaccessible laying in central Asia all too well did we trace the sinister lineaments described by the old Arab demonologist lineaments he wrote drawn from some obscure supernatural manifestation of the souls of those who vexed and nodded the dead seizing the green jade object we gave a last glance at the bleached and cavernide face of its owner and closed up the grave as we found it as we hastened from that abhorrent spot the stolen amulet in singe's pocket we thought we saw the bats descend in a body to the earth we had so lately rifled as if seeking for some cursed and unholy nourishment but the autumn moon shone weak in pale and we could not be sure so too as we sailed the next day away from Haaland to our home we thought we heard the faint distant bang in the background but the autumn wind moaned sad and wan and we could not be sure less than a week after our return to England strange things began to happen we lived as recluses devoid of friends alone and without servants in a few rooms of an ancient manor house on a bleak and unfrequented moor so that our doors were seldom disturbed by the knock of the visitor now however we were troubled by what seemed to be frequent fumblings in the night not only around the doors but around the windows also upper as well as lower once we fancied that a large opaque body darkened the library window when the moon was shining against it and another time we thought we heard a whirring or flapping sound not far off on each occasion investigation revealed nothing and we began to ascribe the occurrences to imagination alone that same curiously disturbed imagination which still prolonged in our ears the faint far bang in the Holland churchyard the jade amulet now reposed in the niche in our museum and sometimes we burned strangely scented candles before it we read much in our hazards necronomicon about its properties and about the relation of ghouls souls to the objects it symbolized and were disturbed by what we read then terror came on the night of September 24th 19 I heard knock at my chamber door fanciing at singins made the knocker enter but was answered only by a shrill laugh there was no one in the corridor when I aroused singin from his sleep he professed entire ignorance of the event and became as worried as I it was that night that the faint distant bang over the moor became to us a certain and dreaded reality four days later whilst we were both in the hidden museum there came a low cautious scratching at the single door which led to the secret library staircase our alarm was now divided for besides our fear of the unknown we had always entertained a dread that our grisly collection might be discovered extinguishing all lights we proceeded to the door and threw it suddenly open where upon we felt an unaccountable rush of air and heard as if receding far away a queer combination of rustling, tittering and articulate chatter whether we were mad, dreaming or in our senses we did not try to determine we only realized with the blackest of apprehensions that the apparently disembodied chatter was beyond a doubt in the Dutch language after that we lived in growing horror and fascination mostly we held to the theory that we were jointly going mad from our life of unnatural excitements but sometimes it pleased us more to dramatize ourselves as the victim of some creeping and appalling doom bizarre manifestations were now too frequent to count our lonely house was seemingly alive with the presence of some maligned being whose nature we could not guess and every night that demoniac bang rolled over the windswept moor always louder and louder on October 29th we found in the soft earth underneath the library window a series of footprints utterly impossible to describe they were as baffling as the hordes of giant bats which haunted the old manor house and unprecedented and increasing numbers the horror reached a culmination on November 18th when singin walking home after dark from the distant railway station was seized by some frightful carnivorous thing and torn to ribbons his screams had reached the house and I hastened to the terrible scene in time to hear a whir of wings and see a vague black cloudy thing silhouetted against the rising moon my friend was dying when I spoke to him and he could not answer coherently all he could do was to whisper the amulet that damned thing then he collapsed an inert mass of mangled flesh I buried him the next midnight in one of our neglected gardens and mumbled over his body one of the devilish rituals he had loved in life and as I pronounced the last demoniac sentence I heard afar on the moor the faint bang of some gigantic hound the moon was up but I dared not look at it and when I saw in the dim lit and moor a wide nebulous shadow sweeping from mound to mound I shut my eyes and threw myself face down upon the ground when I arose trembling I know not how much later I staggered into the house and made shocking obiances before the enshrined amulet of green jade being now afraid to live alone in the ancient house on the moor I departed on the following day for London taking with me the amulet after destroying by fire and burial the rest of the impious collection in the museum but after three nights I heard the bang again and before a week was over felt strange eyes upon me whenever it was dark one evening as I strolled on Victoria embankment for some needed air I saw a black shape obscure one of the reflections of the lamps in the water a wind stronger than the night wind rushed by and I knew that what had befallen singin must soon befall me the next day I carefully wrapped the green jade amulet and sailed for Holland what mercy I might gain by returning the thing to its silent sleeping owner I knew not but I felt that I must at least try any step conceivably logical what the hound was and why it pursued me were questions still vague but I had first heard the bang in that ancient churchyard and every subsequent event including singins dying whisper had served to connect the curse with the stealing of the amulet accordingly I sank into the nethermost abysses of despair when at an inn in Rotterdam I discovered that thieves had dispoiled me of this sole means of salvation the bang was loud that evening and in the morning I read of a nameless deed in the vilest quarter of the city the rabble were in terror for upon an evil tenement had fallen a red death beyond the foulest previous crime of the neighborhood in a squalid thieves den an entire family had been torn to shreds by an unknown thing which left no trace and those around had heard all night above the usual clamor of drunken voices of faint deep insistent note as of a gigantic hound so at last I stood again in that unwholesome churchyard where a pale winter moon cast hideous shadows and leafless trees drooped sullenly to meet the withered frosty grass and cracking slabs and the ivy church pointed a jeering finger at the unfriendly sky and the night wind howled maniacally from over frozen swamps and frigid seas the bang was very faint now and it ceased altogether as I approached in grave I had once violated and frightened away an abnormally large horde of bats which had been hovering curiously around it I know not why I went hither unless to pray or gibber out in same pleas and apologies to the calm white thing that lay within but whatever my reason I attacked the half frozen sod with a desperation partly mine and partly that of a dominating will outside myself excavation was much easier than I expected though at one point I encountered a severe interruption when a lean vulture darted down out of the cold sky and pecked frantically at the grave earth until I killed him with a blow of my spade finally I reached the rotting oblong box and removed the damp nitrous cover this is the last rational act I ever performed for crouched within that centred coffin embraced by a close packed nightmare retinue of huge sinewy sleeping bats was the bony thing my friend and I had robbed not clean and placid as we had seen it then but covered with caked blood and shreds of alien flesh and hair and leering sentiently at me with phosphorescent sockets and sharp and sanguine fangs yawning twistedly in mockery of my inevitable doom and when it gave from those grinning jaws a deep sardonic bay as of some gigantic hound and I saw that it held in its gory filthy claw the lost and fateful amulet of green jade I merely screamed and ran away idiotically my screams soon dissolving into peels of hysterical laughter madness rides the starwind claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses dripping death astride a bacchanal of bats from night black ruins of buried temples of Belial now as the baying of that dead fleshless monstrosity grows louder and louder and the stealthy whirring and flapping of those accursed web wings rolls closer and closer I shall seek with my revolver the oblivion which is my only refuge from the unnamed and unnameable End of The Hound Recording by Colleen McMahon The Judge's House by Bram Stoker This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recorded by Paul Douglas Collister The Judge's House by Bram Stoker When the time for his examination drew near Malcolm Malcomson made up his mind to go somewhere to read by himself he feared the attractions of the seaside and also he feared completely rural isolation for of old he knew its charms and so he determined to find some unpretentious little town where there would be nothing to distract him he refrained from asking suggestions from any of his friends for he argued that each would recommend some place of which he had knowledge and where he had already acquaintances as Malcolm wished to avoid friends he had no wish to encumber himself with the attention of friends and so he determined to look out for a place for himself he packed a portemonnais with some clothes and all the books he required and then took a ticket for the first name on the local timetable which he did not know when at the end of three hours journey he alighted at Benchurch he felt satisfied that he had so far obliterated his tracks as to be sure of having a peaceful opportunity of pursuing his studies he went straight to the one inn which the sleepy little place contained and put up for the night Benchurch was a market town and once in three weeks was crowded to excess but for the reminder of the 21 days it was as attractive as a desert Malcolm looked around the day after his arrival to try to find quarters more isolated than even so quiet an inn as the good traveler afforded there was only one place which took his fancy and it certainly satisfied his wildest ideas regarding quiet in fact quiet was not the proper word to apply to it desolation was the only term conveying any suitable idea of its isolation it was an old rambling heavily built house of the Jacobian style with heavy gables and windows usually small and set higher than was customary in such houses and was surrounded with a high brick wall massively built indeed on examination it looked more like a fortified house than an ordinary dwelling but all these things pleased Malcomson here he thought is the very spot I have been looking for and if I can only get opportunity of using it I shall be happy his joy was increased when he realized beyond doubt that it was not at present inhabited from the post office he got the name of the agent who was rarely surprised at the application a part of the old house Mr. Carnford the local lawyer and agent was a genial old gentleman and frankly confessed his delight at anyone being willing to live in the house to tell you the truth said he I should be only too happy on behalf of the owners to let anyone have the house rent free for a term of years if only people here to see it inhabited it has been so long empty that some kind of absurd prejudice has grown up about it and this can be best put down by its occupation if only he added with a sly glance at Malcomson by a scholar like yourself who wants its quiet for a time Malcomson thought it needless to ask the agent about the absurd prejudice he knew he would get more information if he should require it on that subject from other quarters he paid his three months rent got a receipt and the name of an old woman who would probably undertake to do for him came away with the keys in his pocket he then went to the land lady of the inn who was a cheerful and most kindly person and asked her advice as to such stories and provisions as he would be likely to require she threw up her hands in amazement when he told her he was going to settle himself not in the judges house she said and grew pale as she spoke he explained the locality of the house saying that he did not know its name when he had finished she answered sure enough sure enough the very place it is the judges house sure enough he asked her to tell him about the place why so called and what there was against it she told him that it was so called locally because it had been many years before how long she could not say as for herself from another part of the country but she thought it must have been a hundred years or more the abode of a judge who was held in great terror on account of his harsh sentences and his hostility to the prisoners at a sizes as to what there was against the house she could not tell she had often asked but no one could inform her but there was a general feeling that there was something and for her own part she would not take all the money in drink waters bank and stay in the house an hour by herself she apologized to Malcolm for her disturbing talk it is too bad of me sir and you and a young gentleman too if you will pardon me saying it going to live there all alone if you were my boy and you'll excuse me for saying it you wouldn't sleep there a night not if I had to go there myself with a big alarm bell that's on the roof the good creature was so manifestly in earnest and was so kindly in her intentions that Malcolm almost amused was touched he told her kindly how much he appreciated her interest in him and added but my dear Mrs. Whitham indeed you need not be concerned about me a man who is reading for the mathematical tripos has too much to think of to be disturbed by any of these mysterious somethings and his work is of too exact and prosaic kind to allow of his having any order in his mind for mysteries of any kind harmonical progression permutations and combinations of elliptic functions have sufficient mysteries for me Mrs. Whitham kindly undertook to see after his commissions and he went himself to look for the old woman who had been recommended to him when he turned to the judge's house with her after an interview of a couple of hours he found Mrs. Whitham herself waiting with several men and boys carrying parcels and an upholsterer's man with a bed in a cart for she said though table and chairs might be all very well a bed that hadn't been aired for maybe 50 years was not proper for young ones to lie in she was evidently curious to see the inside of the house and though manifestly so afraid of the some things that at the slightest sound she clutched on to Malcomson whom she never left for a moment went all over the whole place after his examination of the house Malcomson decided to take up his abode in the great dining room which was big enough to serve for all his requirements and Mrs. Whitham with the aid of the char woman Mrs. Dempster proceeded to arrange matters when the hampers were brought in and unpacked Malcomson saw that with much kind forethought she had sent from her own kitchen sufficient provisions to last for a few days before going she expressed all sorts of kind wishes turned and said and perhaps sir as the room is big and draughty it might be well to have one of those big screens put round your bed at night though truth to tell I would die myself if I were to be shut in with all kinds of of things that put their heads round the sides or over the top and look on me the image which she had called up was too much for her nerves and she fled incontentantly Mrs. Dempster sniffed in a superior manner as the landlady disappeared I remarked that for her own part she wasn't afraid of all the boogies in the kingdom I'll tell you what it is sir she said boogies is all kinds and sorts of things except boogies rats and mice beetles and creaky doors and new slates and broken panes and stiff drawer handles that stay out when you pull them and then fall down in the middle of the night look at the wanes coat of the room hundreds of years old do you think there's no rats and beetles there and do you imagine sir that you won't see none of them rats is boogies I tell you and boogies is rats and don't you get to think anything else Mrs. Dempster said Malcomson gravely making her a polite bow you know more than senior wrangler and let me say that as a mark for your indubitable soundness of head and heart I shall when I go give you possession of this house and let you stay here by yourself for the last two weeks of my tenancy for four weeks will serve my purpose thank you kindly sir she answered but I couldn't sleep away from home a night I am in green house charity and if I slept a night away from my rooms I should lose all I have got to live on the rules is very strict and there's too many watching for a vacancy for me to run any risk in the matter only for that sir I'd gladly come here and attend on you all together during your stay my good woman said Malcomson hastily come here on a purpose to obtain solitude and believe me that I'm grateful to the late green how for having organized his admirable charity whatever it is that I am perforce denied the opportunity of suffering from such a form of temptation Saint Anthony himself could not be more rigid on the point the old woman laughed harshly ah you young gentlemen she said you don't fear for not and be like you'll get all the solitude you want here she set to work with her cleaning and by night when Malcomson returned from his walk he always had one of his books to study as he walked he found the room swept and tidied a fire burning on the old hearth the lamp lit and the table spread for supper with Mrs. Whitham's excellent fare this is comfort indeed he said and rubbed his hands when he had finished his supper and lifted the tray to the other end of the great oak dining table he got out his books again put fresh wood on the fire trimmed his lamp and set himself down to a spell of real hard work he went on without a pause till about 11 o'clock when he knocked off for a bit to fix his fire and lamp and to make himself a cup of tea he had always been a tea drinker and during his college life had sat late at work and had taken tea late the rest was a great luxury for him and he enjoyed it with a sense of delicious luxurious ease the renewed fire leapt and sparkled and through quaint shadows through the great old room and as he sipped his hot tea he reveled in the sense of isolation from his kind then it was that he began to notice the first time what a noise the rats were making surely he thought they cannot have been at all the time I was reading had they been I must have noticed it presently when the noise increased he satisfied himself that it was really new it was evident that at first the rats had been frightened at the presence of a stranger and the light of fire and lamp but that as the time went on they had grown bolder and were now disporting themselves as was their want how busy they were and hark to the strange noises up and down the old's waned coat over the ceiling and under the floor they raced and nod and scratched Malcomson smiled to himself as he recalled to mind the saying of mrs. Dempzer boogies is rats and rats is boogies the tea began to have its effect of the intellectual and nervous stimulus and he saw with joy another long spell of work to be done before the night was passed and in the sense of security which it gave him he allowed himself the luxury of a good look round the room he took his lamp in one hand and went all around wondering that so quaint and beautiful an old house had been so long neglected the carving of the oak on the panels of the wains coat was fine and on and round the doors and windows it was beautiful and of rare merit there were some old pictures on the walls but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could not distinguish any detail of them though he held his lamp as high as he could over his head here and there he went round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright eyes glittering in the light but in an instant it was gone and a squeak of a scamper followed the thing that most struck him however was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof which hung down in the corner of the room on the right hand side of the fireplace he pulled up close to the hearth and went back to carved oak chair and sat down to his last cup of tea when this was done he made up the fire and went back to his work sitting at the corner of the table having the fire to his left for a little while the rats disturbed him somewhat with their perpetual scampery but he got accustomed to the noise as one does to the ticking of the clock to the roar of moving water and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the world except the problem which he was trying to solve passed away from him he suddenly looked up his problem was still unsolved and there was in the air that sense of the hour before dawn which is so dread to doubtful life the noise of the rats had ceased indeed it seemed to him must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden cessation which had disturbed him the fire had fallen low but still it threw out a deep red glow as he looked he started in spite of his saying Freud there on the great high bat carved oak chair by the right side of the fireplace sat an enormous rat steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes he had to motion to it as though to hunt it away but it did not stir then he made the motion of throwing something still it did not stir but showed its great white teeth angrily and its cruel eyes shown in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness Malcomson felt amazed and seizing the poker from the hearth ran at it to kill it before however he could strike it the rat with a squeak that sounded like the concentration of hate jumped upon the floor and running up the rope of the alarm bell disappeared in the darkness beyond the range of the green shaded lamp instantly strange to say the noisy scampering of the rats in the wade's coat began again by this time Malcomson's mind was quite off the problem and as a shrill cock crow outside told him of the approaching morning he went to bed and to sleep he slept so sound that he was not even waked by Mrs. Dempster coming to make up his room was only when she had tidied up the place and got his breakfast ready and tapped on the screen which closed in his bed that he woke he was a little tired still after his night's hard work but a strong cup of tea soon freshened him up and taking his book he went out for his morning walk bringing with him a few sandwiches lest he should not care to return till dinner time he found a quiet walk between high elms some way outside the town and here he spent the greater part of the day studying his Laplace on his return he looked in to see Mrs. Whitham and to thank her for her kindness when she saw him coming through the diamond pained bay window of her sanctum she got to meet him and asked him in she looked at him searchingly and shook her head as she said you must not overdo it sir you are paler this morning than you should be too late hours and too hard work on the brains isn't good for any man but tell me sir how did you pass the night well I hope but my heart when Mrs. Dempster told me this morning that you were alright and sleeping sound when she went in oh I was alright he answered smiling the some things didn't worry me as yet only the rats and they had a circus I tell you all over the place there was one wicked looking old devil that sat up on my chair by the fire and wouldn't go till I took the poker to him and then he ran up the rope of the alarm bell and got to somewhere up the wall or the ceiling I couldn't see where it was so dark Mercy on us said Mrs. Whitham an old devil and sitting on a chair by the fire side take care sir take care there's many a true word spoken in jest I mean upon my word I don't understand an old devil the old devil perhaps there sir you needn't laugh for Malcomson had broken into a hearty peel you young folks think it easy to laugh at things that makes older ones shudder never mind sir never mind please God you laugh all the time it's what I wish you myself and the good lady beamed all over in sympathy with his enjoyment her fears gone for a moment oh forgive me Sid Malcomson presently don't think be rude but the idea was too much for me that the old devil himself was on the chair last night and at the thought he laughed again then he went home to dinner this evening the scampering of the rats began earlier indeed it had been going on for his arrival and only sees whilst his presence by its freshness disturbed them after dinner he sat by the fire for a while and had a smoke and then having cleared his table began to work as before tonight the rats disturbed him more than they had done on the previous night how they scampered up and down and under and over and weak and scratched and nod how they getting bolder by degrees came to the mouths of their holes and to the chinks and cracks and crannies in the wanes coating till their eyes shone like tiny lamps as the fire light rose and fell but to him now doubtless accustomed to them their eyes were not wicked only their playfulness touched him the boldest of them made sallies out on the floor or along the moldings of the wanes coat now and again as they disturbed him Malcomson made a sound to frighten them smiting the table with his hand or giving a fierce shh shh so that they fled straight way to their holes and so the early part of the night wore on and despite the noise Malcomson got more and more immersed in his work all at once he stopped as on the previous night being overcome by a sudden silence there was not the faintest sound of gnaw or scratch or squeak the silence was of the grave he remembered the odd occurrence the previous night and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside and then a very odd sensation thrilled through him there on the great old high bat carved oak chair beside the fireplace sat the same enormous rat steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes instinctively he took the nearest thing to his hand a book of logarithms and flung it at it the book was badly aimed and the rat did not stir so again the poker performance of the previous night was repeated and again the rat being closely pursued fled up the rope of the alarm bell strangely too the departure of this rat was instantly followed by the renewal of the noise made by the gen bro rat community on this occasion as on the previous one Malcomson could not see at what part of the room the rat disappeared for the green shade of his lamp left the upper part of the room in darkness and the fire had burned low on looking at his watch he found it was close on midnight and not sorry for the divertisement he made up his fire and made himself his nightly pot of tea he had got through a good spell of work and thought himself entitled to a cigarette and so he sat on the great carved chair before the fire and enjoyed it whilst smoking he began to think that he would like to know where the rat disappeared to for he had certain ideas for the morrow not entirely disconnected with a rat trap accordingly he lit another lamp and placed it so that it would shine well into the right end corner of the wall by the fireplace then he got all the books he had with him and placed them handy to throw at the vermin finally he lifted the rope of the alarm bell and placed the end of it on the table fixing the extreme end under the lamp as he handled it he could not help noticing how pliable it was especially for so strong a rope and one not in use you could hang a man with it he thought to himself when his preparations were made he looked around and said complacently there now my friend I think we shall learn something of you this time he began his work again and though as before somewhat disturbed at first by the noise of the rats soon lost himself in his proposition and problems again he was called to his immediate surrounding suddenly this time it might not have been the sudden silence only which took his attention there was a slight movement of the rope and the lamp moved without stirring he looked to see if his pile of books was within range and then cast his eye along the rope as he looked he saw the great rat drop from the rope on the oak arm chair and sit there glaring at him he raised a book in his right hand and taking careful aim flung it at the rat the latter with a quick movement spraying aside and dodged the missile then he took another book and a third and flung them one after the other at the rat but each time unsuccessfully at last as he stood with a book poised in his hand to throw the rat squeaked and seemed afraid this made Malcomson more than ever eager to strike and the book flew and struck the rat a resounding blow it gave a terrified squeak and turning on his pursuer a look of terrible malevolence ran up the chair back and made a great jump to the rope of the alarm bell and ran up it like lightning the lamp rocked under the sun's strain but it was a heavy one and did not topple over Malcomson kept his eyes on the rat and saw it by the light of the second lamp leap to a molding on the wainscot and disappear through a hole in one of the great pictures which hung on the wall obscured and invisible through its coating of dirt and dust I shall look at my friend's habitation in the mornings of the student as he went over to collect his books the third picture from the fireplace I shall not forget he picked up the books one by one commenting on them as he lifted them conic sections he does not mind nor cycloid oscillations nor the principia nor quaternions nor thermodynamics now for a look at the book that fetched him Malcomson took it up and looked at it as he did so he started and a sudden pallor over spread his face he looked around uneasily and shivered slightly as he murmured to himself the bible my mother gave me what an odd coincidence he sat down to work again and the rats in the wainscot chewed their gambles they did not disturb him however somehow their presence gave him a sense of companionship but he could not attend to his work and after striving to master the subject on which he was engaged gave it up in despair and went to bed as the first drink of dawn stole in through the eastern window he slept heavily but uneasily and dreamed much and when mrs. dempster woke him late in the morning he seemed ill at ease and for a few minutes did not seem to realize exactly where he was his first request rather surprised the servant mrs. dempster when i'm out today i wish you would get the steps and dust or wash those pictures especially that one the third from the fireplace i want to see what they are late in the afternoon malcomson worked at his books in the shaded walk and the cheerfulness of the previous day came back to him as the day wore on and he found that his reading was progressing well he had worked to a satisfactory conclusion all the problems which had as yet baffled him and it was in a state of jubilation he paid a visit to mrs. witham at the good traveler he found a stranger in the cozy sitting room with the landlady who was introduced to him as dr. thornhill she was not quite at ease and this combined with the doctors plunging at once into a series of questions made malcomson come to the conclusion that his presence was not an accident so without preliminary he said dr. thornhill i shall with pleasure answer you any question you may choose to ask me if you will answer me one question first the doctor seemed surprised but he smiled and answered at once done what is it did mrs. witham ask you to come here and see me and advise me dr. thornhill for a moment was taken aback and mrs. witham got fiery red and turned away but the doctor was a frank and ready man he answered at once and openly she did but she didn't intend you to know it i suppose it was my clumsy haste that made you suspect she told me that she did not like the idea of you being in the house all by yourself and that she thought you took too much strong tea in fact she wants me to advise you if possible to give up the tea and the very late hours i was a keen student in my time so i suppose i may take the liberty of a college man without a fence advise you not quite as a stranger malcomson with a bright smile held out his hand shake as they say in america he said i must thank you for your kindness and mrs. witham too and your kindness deserves a return on my part i promise to take no more strong tea no tea at all till you let me and i shall go to bed tonight at one o'clock at the latest will that do? capitol said the doctor now tell me all that you noticed in the old house and so malcomson then and there told in minute detail all that had happened in the last two nights he was interrupted every now and then by some exclamation from mrs. witham till finally when he told of the episode of the bible the landlady's pent up emotions found vent in a shriek and it was not till a stiff glass of brandy and water had been administered that she grew composed again dr. thornhill listened with a face of growing gravity and when the narrative was complete and mrs. witham had been restored he asked the rat always went up the rope of the alarm bell oh it i suppose you know said doctor after a pause what that rope is no it is said the doctor slowly the very rope which the hangman used for all the victims of the judge's judicial orancor here he was interrupted by another scream from mrs. witham and sips had to be taken for her recovery malchipson having looked at his watch and found that it was close to his dinner hour had gone home before her complete recovery when mrs. witham was herself again she almost assailed the doctor with angry questions as to what he meant by putting such horrible ideas into the poor young man's head he has quite enough there already to upset him she added doctor thornhill replied my dear madame i had a distinct purpose in it i wanted to draw his attention to the bell rope and to fix it there it may be that he is in a highly overwrought state and has been studying too much although i am bound to say that he seems a sound and healthy a young man mentally and bodily as ever i saw but then the rats and that suggestion of the devil the doctor shook his head and went on i would have offered to go and stay the first night with him but that i felt sure it would have been a cause of offense he may get in the night some strange fright or hallucination and if he does i want him to pull that rope all alone as he is it will give us warning and we may reach him in time to be of service i shall be sitting up pretty late tonight and shall keep my ears open do not be alarmed if ben church gets a surprise before morning oh doctor what do you mean what do you mean i mean this that possibly nay more probably we shall hear the great alarm bell from the judges house tonight and the doctor made about an effective an exit as could be thought of when malcomson arrived home he found that it was a little after his usual time and mrs. demster had gone away the rules of green house charity were not to be neglected he was glad to see that the place was bright and tidy with a cheerful fire and a well-trimmed lamp the evening was colder than might have been expected in april and a heavy wind was blowing with such rapidly increasing strength that there was every promise of a storm during the night for a few minutes after his entrance the noise of the rat ceased but so soon as they became accustomed to his presence they began again he was glad to hear them for he felt once more the feeling of companionship in their noise and his mind ran back to the strange fact that they only ceased to manifest themselves when the other the great rat with the baleful eyes came upon the scene the reading lamp only was lit and its green shade kept the ceiling and upper part of the room in darkness so that the cheerful light from the hearths spreading over the floor and shining on the white cloth laid over the end of the table was warm and cheery malcomson sat down to his dinner with a good appetite and a buoyant spirit after his dinner and a cigarette he sat steadily down to work determined not to let anything disturb him for he remembered his promise to the doctor and made up his mind to make the best of the time at his disposal for an hour or so he worked alright and then his thoughts began to wander from his books the actual circumstances around him and the calls on his physical attention and his nervous susceptibility were not to be denied by this time the wind had become a gale the gale a storm the old house solid though it was seemed to shake to its foundation and the storm roared and raged through its many chimneys and its queer old gables producing strange unearthly sounds in the empty rooms and corridors even the great alarm bell on the roof must have felt the force of the wind for the rope rose and fell slightly as though the bell were moved a little from time to time and the limber rope fell on the oak floor with a hard and hollow sound as malcom listened to it he thought himself of the doctor's word it is the rope which the hangman used for the victims of the judge's judicial rancor and he went over to the corner of the fireplace and took it in his hand to look at it there seemed a sort of deadly interest in it and as he stood there he lost himself for a moment in speculation as to who these victims were and the grim wish of the judge to have such a ghastly relic under his eyes as he stood there the swaying bell on the roof still lifted the rope now and again but presently there came a new sensation a sort of tremor in the rope as though something was moving along it looking up instantly malcom saw the great rat coming slowly down towards him glaring at him steadily he dropped the rope and started back with a muttered curse and the rat turning ran up the slope again and disappeared and at the same instant malcom some became conscious that the noise of the other rat which had ceased for a while began again all this set him thinking and it occurred to him that he had not investigated the rat or looked at the pictures as he had intended he lit the other lamp without the shade and holding it up went and stood opposite the third picture from the fireplace on the right hand side where he had seen the rat disappear on the previous night at the first glance he started back so suddenly that he almost dropped the lamp at a deadly power overspread his face his knees shook and heavy drops of sweat came on his forehead and he trembled like an aspen but he was young and plucky and pulled himself together and after the pause of a few seconds stepped forward again raised up the lamp and examined the picture which had been dusted and washed and now stood out clearly it was a judge dressed in his robes of scarlet and ermine with a strong and merciless evil crafty and addictive with a sensual mouth hooked nose of ruddy color and shaped like the beak of a bird of prey the rest of his face was of a cadaverous color the eyes were of peculiar brilliance and with a terribly malignant expression as he looked at them Malkinson grew cold for he saw there the very part of the eyes of the great rat the lamp almost fell from his hand he saw the rat with its baleful eyes peering out through the hole in the corner of the picture and noted the sudden cessation of the noise of the other rats however he pulled himself together and went on with his examination of the picture the judge receded in a great high-backed curved oak chair on the right hand side of the great stone fireplace where in the corner a rope hung down from the ceiling its end lying coiled on the floor with a feeling of something like horror Malkinson recognized the scene of the room as it stood and gazed around him in an awestruck manner as though he expected to find some light behind him he looked over to the corner of the fireplace and with a loud cry he let the lamp fall from his hand there in the judge's arm chair with rope hanging behind sat the rat with the judge's baleful eyes now intensified as with fiendish leer saved for the howling of the storm without there was silence the lamp recalled Malkinson to himself fortunately it was a metal and so the oil was not spilled however the practical need of attending to it settled at once his nervous apprehensions when he had turned it out he wiped his brow and thought for a moment this will not do he said to himself if I go on like this I shall become a crazy fool this must stop I would not take tea faith he was pretty right my nerves must have been getting into a queer state funny I did not notice it I never felt better in my life however it is all right now and I shall not be a fool again then he mixed himself a good stiff glass of brandy and water and resolutely sat down to his work it was nearly an hour when he looked up from his book disturbed by the sudden stillness without the wind howled and roared louder than ever and the rain drove in sheets against the windows beating like hail on the glass but within there was no sound whatever saved the echo of the wind as it roared in the great chimney and now and then a hiss as a few raindrops found their way down the chimney in a lull of the storm the fire had fallen low and had ceased to flame though it threw out a red glow Malcomson listened tentatively and presently heard a thin squeaking noise very faint it came from a corner of the room where the rope hung down and he thought it was the creaking rope on the floor as the swaying of the bale raised and lowered it looking up however he saw in the dim light the great rat clinging to the rope and gnawing it the rope was already nearly gnawed through he could see the lighter color where the strands were laid bare as he looked the job was completed and the severed end of the rope fell clattering on the wooden floor whilst for an instant the great rat remained like a knob or tassel at the end of the rope which now began to sway to and fro Malcomson felt for a moment another pang of terror as he saw that now the possibility of calling the outer world to his assistance was cut off but an intense anger took its place and seizing the book he hurled it at the rat the blow was well aimed but before the missile could reach him the rat dropped off and struck the floor with a soft thud Malcomson instantly rushed over towards him but it darted away and disappeared in the darkness of the shadows of the room Malcomson felt that his work was over for the night and he turned then and there who vary the monotony of the proceedings by a hunt for the rat and took off the green shade of the lamp so as to ensure a wider spreading light as he did so the gloom of the upper part of the room was relieved and in the new flood of light great by comparison with the previous darkness the pictures on the wall stood out boldly where he stood Malcomson saw right opposite to him the third picture on the wall from the right of the fireplace he rubbed his eyes in surprise and then a great fear began to come upon him in the center of the picture was a great irregular patch of brown canvas as fresh as when it was stretched on the frame the background was as before with the chair and chimney corner and rope but the figure of the judge had disappeared Malcom almost in a chill of horror turned slowly away and then he began to shake and tremble like a man in a palsy his strength seemed to have left him and he was incapable of action or movement hardly even a thought he could only see and hear there on the great high back carved oak chair sat the judge in his robes of scarlet and ermine with his baleful eyes glaring vindictively and a smile of triumph on the resolute cruel mouth as he lifted with his hands a black cap Malcomson felt as if the blood was running from his heart as one does in moments of prolonged suspense there was a singing in his ears without he could hear the roar and howl of the tempest and through it swept on the storm came the striking of midnight by the great chimes in the marketplace he stood for a space of time endless still as a statue and with wide open horror struck eyes breathless as the clock struck so the smile of triumph on the judge's face intensified and at the last stroke of midnight he placed the black cap on his head slowly and deliberately the judge rose from his chair and picked up the piece of rope of the alarm bell which lay on the floor drew it through his hands as if he enjoyed its touch and then deliberately began to knot when end of it fashioning it into a noose this he tightened and tested with his foot pulling hard at it till he was satisfied and then making a running noose of it which he held in his hand then he began to move along the table on the opposite side of Malcomson keeping his eyes on him until he had passed him when with a quick movement he stood in front of the door Malcomson then began to feel that he was trapped and tried to think of what he should do there was some fascination in the judge's eyes which he never took off him and he had perforced to look he saw the judge approach still keeping between him and the door and raised the noose and throw it towards him as if to entangle him with a great effort and saw the rope fall beside him and heard it strike the oaken floor again the judge raised the noose and tried to ensnare him even keeping his bell full eyes fixed on him and each time by a mighty effort the student just managed to evade it so this went on for many times the judge seeming never discouraged nor discomposed at failure but playing as a cat does with a mouse at last a despair which had reached its climax Malcomson cast a quick glance around him the lamp seemed to have a blazed up and there was a fairly good light in the room at the many rat holes and in the chinks and crannies of the wanes coat he saw the rat's eyes and this aspect that was purely physical gave him a gleam of comfort he looked around and saw the rope of the great alarm bell was laid in with rats every inch of it was covered with them and more and more were pouring through the small circular hole in the ceiling when it emerged so that with their weight was beginning to sway hark! it had swayed till the clapper had touched the bell the sound was but a tiny one but the bell was only beginning to sway and it would increase at the sound the judge who had been keeping his eyes fixed on Malcomson looked up and a scowl of diabolical anger overspread his face his eyes fairly glowed like hot coals and he stamped his foot with a sound that seemed to make the house shake a dreadful peel of thunder broke overhead as he raged the rope again whilst the rats kept running up and down the rope as though working against time this time instead of throwing it he drew close to his victim and held open the noose as he approached as he came closer there seemed something paralyzing in his very presence and Malcomson stood rigid as a corpse he felt the judge's icy fingers touch his throat as he adjusted the rope the noose tightened tightened then the judge taking the rigid form the student in his arms carried him over and placed him standing in the oak chair and stepping up beside him put his hand up and caught the end of the swaying rope of the alarm bell as he raged his hand the rats fled squeaking and disappeared through the hole in the ceiling taking the end of the noose Malcomson's neck he tied it to the hanging bell and then descending pulled away the chair when the alarm bell of the judge's house began to sound a crowd soon assembled lights and torches of various kinds appeared and soon a silent crowd was hurrying to the spot they knocked loudly at the door but there was no reply then they burst in the door put into the great dining room the doctor at the head there at the end of the rope of the great alarm bell hung the body of the student and on the face of the judge in the picture was a malignant smile end of the judge's house recording by Paul Douglas Collister Kansas USA