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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Wonder Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
In Mistress of Horror, Arthur Leo Zagat delivers a spine-chilling tale where terror takes a seductive form. The story follows a mysterious woman with a dark allure who holds an entire town in her sinister grip. As strange deaths and eerie occurrences spread, the townsfolk realize they are trapped under the spell of a creature who thrives on fear. But breaking free from her hold is no simple task. This tale, filled with suspense and dark magic, is perfect for those who crave the thrill of the unknown and the pull of danger lurking in the shadows.
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Seitenzahl: 45
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Mistress of Horror
I. — LEFT FOR DEAD
II. — THE ROOM WITH THE GREEN LIGHT
III. — THE SHADOW ON THE STAIRS
IV. — THE HORROR BEHIND THE DOOR
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Mistress of Horror
Horror Stories, February 1935, with "Mistress of Horror"
The first sight of that desolate island chilled the marrow of Beth Stockton's bones—yet her sense of duty sent her on, into that cavern of slime and screams where fiends of Satan plied the writhing snake of a blood-tipped whip to drive her mind to madness, her body to tortured death, and her soul to hell!
I. — LEFT FOR DEAD
THE high grey cliff sprang sheer from the sea, shot vertically upward for two hundred feet, and hung like some solitary, mountainous wave solidified to bleak, utterly bare rock. Out of its western face some prehistoric cataclysm had gouged a deep groove down again to the water's edge, so that here, and here only, there was a tiny, walled-off beach; a narrow ledge of sliding, sharp-edged stones. On this ledge Beth Stockton was crouched; her back pressed against the towering, unclimbable precipice; her eyes, wide and staring with apprehension, fixed on the grey, oily swell of the sea.
A brooding, intense silence dripped from the vault of a leaden, ominous sky—a silence that was only intensified by the long swish of a roller as it came up on the broken stones at her feet, came an inch nearer her than the black wetness its preceding fellow had left, seethed momentarily and seeped away. Seeped away only to form again, to come in again. This one would reach a little nearer, she knew, and the next still closer, till the wan water would retreat no longer, but would creep slowly higher; swallowing her ankles, her thighs, her breasts, crawling over her head...
Beth whimpered. Her fingers tightened on the handle of the black bag to which she instinctively clung; tightened till it seemed that the blood would burst from their aching tips. She was alone, utterly alone, and the tide was coming in, and soon she must drown. Death crept inexorably upon her...
The girl's fear-stricken glance swept once more across the sea's melancholy waste till it found what looked like a two-legged black spider crawling along the horizon. "Elmer!" she screamed to the fisherman who had brought her here from Oldport in that now dwindling dory. "Elmer!" the cry once more ripped a throat already raw with futile screams. "Come back! For God's sake come back and get me!"
Only the murmurous silence of the sea heard her, the eerie soundlessness that folded around Sorro Island like a pall. Even had her cries reached him, Beth thought, Elmer Perkins would not have returned. Twenty minutes ago he had leaped from his boat as its prow had touched these rocks. He had literally hauled her from her seat, had hurled her bag after her. Then, white-faced, he had plunged back into the small craft, and before Beth had realized that there was no path, no way of leaving this spot, he had gotten yards away, threshing his oars with long, desperate strokes as if life itself depended on the speed of his departure. Open-mouthed at his inexplicable haste, the girl had not called to him till he was well beyond hearing...
Beth twisted again, frantically searching the desolate, blank loom of the cliff for the faintest hint of a foothold, of some means, however difficult, of escape from doom. There was none. There was none! There must be, she sobbed, there must be some way out. Her mind beat against the hopelessness of her predicament like the wings of a caged bird. Elmer Perkins, the gaunt fisherman who had dandled her on his knees as a pigtailed, barefoot youngster would not abandon her to the tide. Dr. Hamilton would not have sent her here to die.
So short a while ago the old physician had peered at her over his spectacles. His fragile hand had gripped hers fervently as he hawked a dry throat; and his age-thinned voice had quavered: "I've got a case for you, my dear. Your first case. I was down at the depot to wire for a nurse when your mother told me you had graduated and were coming home for a week's rest, so I waited. But you must go at once. Elmer is waiting to run you over to Sorro Island."
