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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Terror Tales
- Sprache: Englisch
Satan's Scalpel by Arthur Leo Zagat is a gripping thriller that cuts to the heart of human darkness and twisted genius. When a brilliant but deranged surgeon goes on a rampage, his weapon of choice is not just any scalpel—it's a tool of terror that leaves his victims in grotesque states. As the body count rises and panic grips the city, a determined detective races against time to track down the madman behind the surgical nightmares. With each clue leading deeper into a chilling web of motives and madness, can the detective stop the surgeon before his scalpel claims more lives? Dive into this spine-tingling tale where every cut reveals a new layer of horror.
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Seitenzahl: 78
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Satan's Scalpel
I. — APE ATTACK
II. — THE HEADLESS CORPSE
III. — TERROR AT THE CROSSROADS
IV. — SEAN O'FLAHERTY'S DOOM
V. — FLIGHT THROUGH THE TREES
VI. — MAN INTO BEAST
VII. — THE HELL-SURGEON'S LUST
VIII. — DEATH AND HORROR BLENDED
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Satan's Scalpel
I. — APE ATTACK
INTO the side-show tent the strident blare of a calliope filtered, a barker's raucous shouts, the crack of rifles from a shooting gallery—all the surging, happy tumult of Cranport's annual gala night. It was spring. Salburn's Super Shows once more were starting out on the road, and the factory town was getting a preview of its refurbished marvels.
The simple people of the community were also getting, all unknowingly, a preview of the horror that was to come before the gaudy caravan returned to its winter quarters—horror that would paint faces now ruddy under the flare of carnival torches with the grey of grisly dread; that would make screams of terror tear through throats now chortling with laughter and replace gayety with the desolation of fear-bred madness.
"Hot! Hot! Get 'em while they're red hot," a weenie vendor bawled, and from the Thriller Ride shrilled the mirthful shrieks of its tumbled patrons.
But within the canvas walls of Zortal's tent the clamor was muted by a strained, taut hush. The terraced bleachers were in shadow, so that from Dan King's front row seat the packed benches were only a mounting bank of pallid, blurred ovals. But he knew that their occupants were hunched forward, silently, almost grimly intent on the huge ape in the central arena—staring at the ape and the stocky, swart-visaged human in close-fitting tights of green silk who stood to one side, glowering and quite motionless.
Gasoline flares, high on poles, stabbed down at the hard- packed earth, filled the ring with a dancing, fitful glare. The long black lash of a cruel whip hung down along Zortal's leg and coiled at his feet, but neither by word nor sign was he giving any direction to the shaggy, lumbering primate in its incredible routine.
Naida Stone's little hand crept into King's protective one. It was icy, quivering. "I don't like it," she whispered, tremulously. "There's something wrong about it, something dreadfully wrong." A shudder ran through her slender body, so tinglingly close against his own.
"The brute is better trained than most, that's all," the young automotive engineer rumbled. But even as he said it, chill prickles scampered up and down his spine and he was conscious of a faint quiver at the pit of his stomach.
Was it some atavistic fear that crawled sluggishly in his blood, some ancestral memory of the days when Man first moved into caves and the Tree People still stalked him through steamy jungle aisles? But he had seen great apes before and felt nothing but a mild interest. In the hulking chimpanzee padding noiselessly out there, there was some eerie, too-human quality. Vaguely he, too, sensed that it had passed through some strange metamorphosis into a being neither beast nor man, into an entity beyond the pale of familiar things.
The gigantic beast, bent-kneed, long-armed, blackly hirsute, shuffled to a large mound in the center of the ring and jerked a tarpaulin from it. A stripped automobile chassis stood revealed—with bare framework—and beside it a helter- skelter pile of gears, steel rods, castings, all the multifarious parts of a car's power plant. Ranged on a canvas strip were wrenches, spanners and other implements. The polished tools splintered light into darting gleams...
Muscles tightened along the ridge of Dan King's square jaw. A murmur ran through the crowd, almost a moan. Nearly all of them workers in Cranport's two automobile factories—every man in the gasping audience had often seen just such piles of jumbled parts. King, himself part owner and engineer, of the Mayflower plant had arranged more than one such display for speed tests between crews of expert assemblers. Good Lord! Was the ape...?
The astounding speculation became actuality. The primate snatched up tools, fell on the tumbled mass of fabricated metal. With incredible swiftness it changed—with unbelievable speed a motor grew on the chassis, a crankshaft clanged into place, connecting rods were fitted to their bearings. Muscles swelled under the shaggy hide, the tremendous chest heaved as weights ordinarily handled by clanking cranes yielded to the chimpanzee's gigantic strength, were lifted and dropped meticulously into their beds. Grotesque black paws darted in intricate manipulations with a deftness, a dexterity no human laborer could surpass.
"No! No!" Naida whimpered. "It isn't doing it. It can't be. It isn't possible."
She was warm, palpitant within the curve of Dan King's arm—but in that moment he did not wonder at his daring, at her acquiescence. His throat was dry, his brain throbbed with an astoundment that was almost pain. He pulled his gaze from the fantastic performance, sought saner things for assurance of his own sanity.
Across the ring, nearly opposite, Ned Salburn leaned forward, his heavy-jowled face rubicund, his jaws working on his eternal tobacco cud. Further along was Warren Fenton, superintendent for United Motors of their Hiawatha factory, Mayflower's bitterest rival. Fenton's fox-like countenance was livid, his eyes almost popping from his head.
The emerald-clad man in the arena was somehow more erect. There was a swagger in the tilt of his, Zortal's, shoulders, in the poise of his head, as though he were saying, with gloating triumph, "I have done this. I, Zortal the Great."
From somewhere high up a hoarse voice boomed: "Come out from under that mask Pat Cooney. We know you. Come out!"
Tension broke as boisterous, almost hysteric laughter swept the big tent. The great ape dropped its wrench, twisted around to face the jester—and King's scalp tightened as he saw in the beast's russet fur a bald spot crowning its brow-less skull that had a gargoylesque resemblance to the popular foreman who had quit the factory without notice about a month before. Then the similitude was gone, the ape was altogether bestial as it loped forward, its curved knuckles brushing the ground. Light struck across its snouted, leathery countenance and the bridgeless spread of its flat nose, while the grotesque visage worked with some obscure emotion.
"Get back! Get back there," Zortal shouted, coming alive. "Get back!" He was moving to intercept the chimpanzee's path, his long, wicked lash lifting in his sinewy hand.
The ape came on, ignoring its master, thick lips snarling away from yellow fangs as it came straight for King, and he half- lifted from his seat with some dim notion of fending the brute off from Naida. Suddenly it was very near, and Dan saw its look...
His skin was suddenly a tight sheath for his quivering body, his palms were wet with cold sweat. Good God! Those were not the eyes of an animal. A soul looked out from those eyes, a tortured human soul, and in their blue depths fear crawled in a suffering terrible appeal!
Something flashed across King's vision, and there was the crack of a gun shot. No—! It was Zortal's whip as it lashed across the ape's hairy back, lifted, writhed, and bit savagely again and again into brute flesh.
"Back to your work. Back, I say!"
Clamor beat about Dan. Shouts, a woman's scream, were suddenly swallowed, blotted out, by an abysmal, thunderous roar that filled the tent with sound almost tangible, that blasted its hearers with devastating terror. The ape whirled on its tormentor. The out lash of its colossal arm was the lightning strike of a rattlesnake, and Zortal's whip was in the grip of a black, gnarled paw—was wrenched from the trainer's grip. The beast crouched, pounced. Zortal went down under a grunting, snarling tornado of hairy fury, and the flash of green silk was gone.
Dan King was somehow in the ring. He was tugging frantically at a pole at the top of which a torch flared. A shriek burbled in his ears, a shriek of purest agony. The rod came away in King's hands and he whirled, threw himself at the monstrous, snarling simian. His extemporary weapon pounded down and flame splashed on tossing, red-brown shagginess. Burned hair, frying flesh, stung its nostrils.
The chimpanzee surged erect, twisting. King leaped far back. The enraged beast loomed over him, tremendous. Its brutish mouth yawned cavernous and its bellow was about him like a black flood. Fetid breath gusted over him.
For an appalling instant fear ran icy in the engineer's veins. Monstrous arms flailed, and the giant ape sprang still roaring, to tear him apart. King's muscles exploded into swift movement, and he lunged forward to meet that cataclysmic rush, thrust the blazing flare squarely into the brute's face. The creature screamed and the man leaped back out of its reach, lithely. The flame-pot rolled across the ground, vomiting flame and black smoke.
The chimpanzee thudded to a halt. It clawed at its cooked face with huge hands, and he saw that in the deep-sunk sockets under the overhang of its forehead there were blackened cinders where eyes should be.
Naida was suddenly beside King—clutching his arm. "Dan!" the girl shrilled. "Dan! Come back. He'll kill you!"
