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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Dime Mystery Magazine
- Sprache: Englisch
Girl of the Goat-God by Arthur Leo Zagat is a haunting and atmospheric tale that delves into the eerie and supernatural. Set in a remote village shrouded in mystery, the story follows a young woman who is believed to be the living embodiment of an ancient, malevolent deity—the Goat-God. As dark rituals and sinister forces swirl around her, she becomes the focal point of fear and fascination. But is she truly the harbinger of doom, or a pawn in a larger, more terrifying game? With the lines between myth and reality blurring, this chilling tale will keep you on edge, questioning the true nature of the evil that lurks within.
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Seitenzahl: 52
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Girl of the Goat-God
Girl of the Goat-God
I. — SWAMP TERROR
II. — LIVING NIGHTMARE
III. — MAN TRAP
IV. — CLUTCH OF THE SWAMP
V. — THE END OF THE LORANS
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Girl of the Goat-God
Girl of the Goat-God
Into the night-shrouded swamp went Walter Parton, seeking the girl who long since had told him she was not fit to receive his love. Behind him sounded the shrill, devil-piping of that grinning god of hell, summoning his gold-horned beasts. And in his ears echoed the ghastly screams of Rose Loran from that hidden hut of evil where, people whispered, the marks of cloven hoofs had put Satan's signature.
I. — SWAMP TERROR
OUT of the night a scream rose, high and thin and quivering. For a long minute it held, a scarlet thread of sound. Then it ended, and there was nothing but the rustle of breeze-stirred foliage and the shrill grating of the crickets, screeching an obbligato to terror.
Rose Loran was icily motionless, staring across vague lamplight at the black oblong of the window through which the shriek had come. In her cold hands the dishes she had just removed from the cluttered supper table rattled tinily, shivering with the uncontrollable tremble of her slight frame. A precariously balanced tumbler jittered against the edge of the tray, toppled, smashed to the floor. The kitchen door behind the girl crashed open.
"What was it?" Aunt Faith chattered. "Rose! Where—I thought you..."
Rose twisted, the older woman's gibbering fright paradoxically restoring control over muscles momentarily paralyzed by the horror of that scream. Faith Loran, tall and spare, her drawn, thin face ash-colored and twitching, clung to the door-jamb. Her grey, tired eyes were wide-pupilled, staring, and her gaunt neck was corded with fear.
"I—I don't know." The words rasped Rose's parched throat. "Someone in the garden. Someone—it—it didn't sound like anything human."
"The—the garden." The woman's pallid lips parted only slightly to let out the whispered syllables. "Elmer... I sent Elmer... to the well."
"Oh Aunt Faith!" The exclamation was sharply rebuking. "In the dark! When you know he can hardly see in bright sunlight!"
But there was relief in Rose's voice, too. Now she understood that scream. The decrepit old man who was their one servant had stumbled, fallen hard, and screamed. That was all it was. There was no reason for this fear that tore at her, that squeezed her pounding heart. Rose turned, snatched up the lamp from the table, started for the great arched opening at the other end of the high-ceilinged, huge dining hall.
"Rose!" Aunt Faith's bony fingers clutched her biceps, digging in with convulsive strength. "Rose! Where are you going?"
"Out to Elmer. He's hurt. I've got to..."
"No!" It was a tenuous, almost voiceless gust of sound. "Don't go out there! Don't go out there—in the dark."
"The dark!" Rose jerked away, exasperatedly. "I'm not a child. I'm not afraid of the dark."
She was, though. She was eerily terrified by the moonless murk out there. Aunt Faith had made her afraid of it, in the past few weeks. The way her aunt had insisted on locking all the doors and windows at nightfall; the way she would stand for hours staring out into the sightless gloom—these things had their effect on the girl's nerves. She began to believe that her aunt expected to see something—dreadful...
Only yesterday Rose had told Walter about Faith's queer behavior. Big shouldered, stalwart Walter Parton, the man who loved her and whom she loved. He had laughed, and then suddenly a tender fierceness had masked his broad-planed face. "Why don't you let me take you away from all this, Rose?" he had growled. "From this rotting house and this half-crazy aunt of yours."
"I can't, Walter," the girl had sobbed. "Why do you keep coming back and asking me? You know I can't marry you. You know I can't marry anyone. I daren't."
"I'll keep coming back, and I'll keep asking you till you say yes." How she had wanted to snuggle into those great arms of his, to feel his lips on hers! But she had pulled away and had told him to go, and he had climbed into his roadster and driven it away at reckless speed toward his home in Loranton. And she had gone slowly back to the shadows of Loran Hall and to the dread that had settled down upon it...
The dim gleam of her lamp could not fill the vast expanse of the entrance foyer. It slid over the lower steps of a baronial staircase, along papered walls whose intricate patterns were faded and drab, stopped at the patinaed, dark oak of a towering door. Rose went to the portal, tugged at its heavy bolt.
Aunt Faith was alongside her, was plucking fearfully at her sleeve. "Don't open it. For God's sake don't open it."
The girl thrust her shoulder against the aged spinstress, shoved her away. "Please, Aunt Faith. You're hysterical. Elmer..." The bolt came out of its socket, and the heavy door creaked slowly inward to her pull. The lamp-flame flickered, sent a filament of black smoke curling upward, then burned steadily in the lifeless air. A rotted board in the floor of the broad porch sagged under Rose's slight weight. The roof-high pilasters fronting the house were a row of pallid, gigantic spectres marching away on either side into obscurity. A peculiar, hushed oppression closed in on her, and the pungent aroma of lush greenery was in her nostrils, tainted with the miasmic breath of Gorham's Swamp that held the Loran Estate within the crescent sweep of its putrescent bog.
