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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Doc. Turner Series
- Sprache: Englisch
Terror's Twilight Sleep by Arthur Leo Zagat is a spine-chilling horror tale that delves into the darkest corners of the human mind. When a new medical procedure promises peaceful, dreamless sleep, those who partake soon find themselves trapped in a nightmarish reality where terror reigns supreme. As their deepest fears come to life, the line between dream and reality blurs, and the only escape may be death itself. Can anyone survive the horrors that lurk in the twilight between consciousness and oblivion, or will they all succumb to the sinister forces that seek to claim their souls? This haunting story will keep you awake at night, questioning the true nature of sleep.
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Seitenzahl: 37
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Terror's Twilight Sleep
Synopsis
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Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Terror's Twilight Sleep
Synopsis
Over the river's dark surface rowed the strange crew of corpse corsairs, their captain a man who stole brains as well as booty—and only Doc Turner knew how to trap this thief who threatened to plunge the whole world into a twilight sleep of terror!
The Spider, June 1938, with "Terror's Twilight Sleep"
1
THE sprawling trestle of the "El" roofed Morris Street with blackness. The tumult of the slum day had faded to a restless post-midnight hush, but a timorous breeze, sifting up from the river, could not sweep the deserted thoroughfare clean of the odor of poverty. It was a distinctive compound of spoiled vegetables, of sweat unwashed from toil-wearied bodies, of shoddy clothing and rotted shoe leather.
From the windows of a drugstore two huge glass bottles laid red and green light-streaks across the debris-strewn pavement. In the doorway of the grimy pharmacy stood a bent, feeble-seeming old man. His cheeks were gaunt and netted with fine wrinkles, faded-blue eyes fogged with weariness, hair silky white.
His long day was ended, but Andrew Turner was loath to leave the shop where he had spent more years than he cared to recall. There might still be someone in need of him, some infant suddenly choking with the croup, some—
The thud of a footfall from around the corner turned Doc Turner toward it, his gnarled, acid-stained fingers tugging at the bushy droop of his mustache. The sound came again. A frown of perplexity creased the druggist's wrinkled brow.
There was something peculiar about the cadence of those footfalls, something too precisely measured—too unresiliently ponderous. It was almost as if not a human but a machine pounded, thud-thud-thud, on the concrete. Yet the sounds were unmistakably footfalls, and what possible machine could be walking, thud-thud-thud—along Hogbund Lane?
Abruptly, the night seemed to tense, quivering with a weird dread.
The strange sounds came nearer. They came slowly, and with a strange quality of inevitability. Almost, the thought trailed across Doc's brain, like the inevitability of death itself. The old druggist waited... and while he waited his breath caught up sharply in his lungs.
A shadow slid along the sidewalk. But the street lamp that cast it was too far down the block to give it definite shape. Then something moved around the store window's corner and, thud-thud-thud, a form came into view.
Pent breath hissed from between Doc Turner's teeth, and a wry smile twitched his thin lips. It was a man, squat, burly, who turned now and came toward Doc along the Morris Street sidewalk. It was Anton Czerno, a pushcart peddler who each day took his stance at the curb just a little way down the line from here.
Czerno came into the green glow from the drugstore window, and once more Andrew Turner's lids narrowed. The huckster's knobbed and unshaven countenance was as devoid of expression as a cardboard mask, his dark eyes unfathomable pits under the jutting, shaggy eaves of his brows. His torso was rigid. His arms hung stiff and straight at his sides. His left leg lifted angularly as the leg of a puppet might if it had been tugged at the knee by an invisible string. It thudded down, and the right leg jerked stiffly up, jerked down, striking dull sound from the pavement. The left leg lifted...
"Anton!" Doc cried, stepping from his threshold. He snatched for the man's arm. Czerno's left leg thudded down, the right jerked up... "What's the matter?" Turner's fingers closed on biceps hard as stone where there should be the elasticity of flesh. "What's wrong with you?"
The gripped arm tore from the old druggist's grasp, and the peddler pounded straight on, thud-thud-thud, without pause, an animated mannikin staring directly ahead with dreadful, unseeing blankness.
"Anton!" Doc cried, more sharply, getting a new hold on Czerno's shoulder. "Wake up!"
