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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Dime Mystery Magazine
- Sprache: Englisch
Bride of the Winged Terror by Arthur Leo Zagat plunges readers into a spine-chilling world of supernatural horror and suspense. When a remote town is terrorized by a mysterious winged creature, fear spreads like wildfire. Among the chaos, a young woman is inexplicably drawn to the monstrous entity, her fate entwined with the horror that descends from the skies. As the town's darkest secrets are revealed, she must confront the terrifying truth: is she the creature's next victim, or is there a more sinister connection? Prepare for a thrilling ride filled with eerie atmospheres, heart-pounding tension, and a shocking twist that will leave you breathless.
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Seitenzahl: 48
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Bride of the Winged Terror
I. — BIRD OF DEATH
II. — THE FLYING FEAR
III. — DEATH STALKS THE FOREST
IV. — OUT OF THE GRAVE
V. — MAGDALENE!
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Bride of the Winged Terror
I. — BIRD OF DEATH
THE dirt road had been climbing for five miles, and Dick Mervale knew from the increasing difficulty with which he breathed that they must be very high. But there was the greater height on the right of the road along which their open-topped roadster traveled: a grey cliff which rose almost perpendicular for a thousand feet, and then became a thickly forested slope running back, but still upward, until it seemed to hang in the overcast sky, a vast, dark, looming shape, somehow foreboding.
"Buzzard Mountain," Fred Harris said, jerking his head toward it. "If my hunch is right, Gorham Carstairs is somewhere up there. Winburg's a mile ahead, around the bend. Remember the story. We're driving through to Haleton. We got twisted off the highway, but someone told us it was better to keep on than to turn back. Better let me do the talking."
"No chance of someone's recognizing you, is there? Like you did Carstairs' photo when the reward circular came into the office?"
"Hell no! I was a kid of fourteen when Mom died an' Uncle Leslie sent for me. Carstairs was a grown man then. He didn't change much in the twenty years he was working in the bank, except that he's got grey. But we got to watch ourselves. These hillbillies hate furriners worse'n poison, an' they stick together like glue. If they're suspicious, we're lawmen our bird'll be gone when we get to his hideout, an' five grand reward will be gone with him. Five grand, an' our big chance to show up the cops an' wedge in on the Bankers' Association business."
Harris might have left the hills twenty years ago, but the hill dialect clung to him; and he was wiry, lean-faced expressionless as all the mountain breed. Dick Mervale was burly, gigantic by contrast; his hard-boned countenance heavy-jowled. But there was an air of competence about him too, and undaunted courage in his grey, level eyes.
"Lord," he grunted. "You don't have to keep rubbing it in that this break means we'll start eating regular at last. I was about ready to pack in the private dick racket and crawl back on the force when..."
Harris grunted suddenly, and pitched forward over the wheel. Mervale grabbed for it, kicking Fred's foot off the accelerator, pounding his own heel on the brake, and fighting for a frantic moment to keep the lunging car from running off the curving road, from catapulting into a shaggy, thick tree trunk that loomed suddenly straight ahead.
The roadster stopped, and Mervale's shoulder-holster automatic was in his fist. But there wasn't anyone to shoot at. There was only the thick greenery of the tree clump that filled the bend where the road curved, and screened the halted car from the heights. There was only the grey glimmer of the cliff-face through the clustered trunks.
"Fred," Mervale whispered. "Are you sick? Fred!"
Harris lolled against him, limp and utterly motionless. "Fred," his partner groaned, sighting a little black hole in the left side of brown-thatched skull, and a dribble of blood that ran down a leathery cheek. Not very much of it. Dead men do not bleed.
DEAD. It took a little time for the realization to percolate into Mervale's numbed brain that his buddy was dead. They hadn't expected anything like this. Not from the grey little man who had been an inconspicuous, trusted bank clerk for two decades, and then had absconded with fifty thousand dollars. They had thought it only a question of tracing Carstairs down, putting the cuffs on his wrists and taking him back with them to the city.
No lead from a pocket-gun had made that little hole. It was steel—a steel-jacketed rifle bullet that did not spread. The hole was an inch above Harris' ear, raked downward. It had come from above, from far above...
Mervale recalled a sharp crack, like the snap of a broken bough, that sounded just before his companion had slumped. It had been so distant he had paid no attention to it. Distant—The lethal shot had come from far up the mountain.
He glanced up, involuntarily. The leafy tree-tops which had saved him from sharing his partner's fate blocked his view of the height. But against the leaden sky he saw a black-winged shape wheel and circle. He remembered the name of the mountain, and shuddered.
The buzzards were already gathering to pick Fred's bones. But they wouldn't get the chance... If he drove into Winburg he'd have to explain what had happened. The quick suspicions of the hillbillies would be aroused, and Carstairs would be warned.
Little muscles, knotting, made a ridge along Mervale's jaw, and his eyes were bleak, dangerous.
There was only one practicable way to climb Buzzard Mountain. Harris had sketched it for him: a narrow, ledge-like path that started a half-mile beyond Winburg and zigzagged up the face of the cliff. Mervale was going up that path. He was going up there alone, and he was going to bring Carstairs down it. Or leave him up there, food for the buzzards.
