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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Doc. Turner Series
- Sprache: Englisch
The Devil's Candlestick by Arthur Leo Zagat is a mesmerizing blend of mystery and supernatural intrigue. When a seemingly innocuous candlestick is discovered in an antique shop, its dark and malevolent origins quickly come to light. The candlestick, with its eerie aura and unsettling power, becomes the centerpiece of a series of unexplained and chilling events. As those who come into contact with it face their deepest fears and darkest desires, a detective must unravel the sinister truth behind this cursed artifact. Will they uncover the malevolent force at play before it's too late, or will the candlestick claim yet another victim? Prepare for a suspenseful journey into the heart of darkness where every shadow hides a secret.
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Seitenzahl: 38
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
The Devil's Candlestick
Synopsis
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Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Devil's Candlestick
Synopsis
He was a headmaster of horror—that weird tutor who taught small boys to be human torches. When little Abie was snatched by the fire-bug, old Doc Turner had to act fast to save his young assistant from a blazing funeral pyre that consumed the living and wiped out the secrets of the dead!
The Spider, October 1937, with "The Devil's Candlestick"
1
WITHIN the tight black oval of her threadbare shawl the woman's face was the disintegrating countenance of a mummy. Her skin was a yellowish grey parchment netted by innumerable wrinkles in a tracery of fine lines, and beneath it there was no flesh but only a skull's hard outline. Age had pointed her chin, hollowed her cheeks and dried the cartilage of her nose so that all that was left of it was the short ridge of bone. Her lips curled inward to fill the space of long-vanished teeth.
Deep within cavernous pits lurked bleared and rheumy eyes. There was in them the dull, hopeless weariness of one who has lived too long and thus seen too much of sorrow, but there was also a terrible fear.
Andrew Turner wondered what could possibly be the reason for that fear. There is so little of which the greatly aged can be afraid. Pain is their daily lot and death but release from pain. Too well he knew this, on whom age rested none too lightly.
"Yes," he asked. "What can I do for you?"
She did not reply at once, and so he had time to observe her more closely. Her tiny frame was so bent, her bones so shrunken, that she came hardly shoulder high to the sales counter of the drugstore in which Doc Turner had spent more years than he cared to count. By contrast, he was straight and tall, though his own body was stooped, his silken mane and bushy mustache a gleaming white, corded veins showing blue through the almost transparent skin of the hand he rested on the counter edge.
"What is it you wish?" he asked again with gentle patience.
"Poison," the woman answered in the shadow of a voice. "Your deadliest poison."
Into the white-shelved, dim-lit cloister of the ancient pharmacy seeped the tumult of a Morris Street Saturday night—the hoarse cries of peddlers whose pushcarts lined the slum thoroughfare, the shrill calls of tatterdemalion urchins, the shuff-shuff of manifold feet on the debris-strewn sidewalk, the crowd-sound of high-pitched polyglot chatter, the honk and blare of traffic, the pounding rumble of the "El" train on its trestle overhead. But all that was muted and distant. Within the store was only a startled, throbbing hush.
Then, "What do you want the poison for?"
"To kill a rat."
Doc's breath hissed from between his teeth in a little puff. He had thought... He bent to pull out a drawer in the rearward face of the counter. Thus hidden, he allowed a frown of perplexity to cross his visage. Shawled and shabbily dressed, the aged woman appeared no different from a hundred others out there on Morris Street, but the purity of her English, untinged by any foreign accent, was utterly alien to the vicinity. Nor had he seen her before, though he was acquainted with every denizen of the drab and dingy tenements for blocks around, with them and with every detail of their poverty-stricken lives.
"This," he said, "is just the thing." He straightened and held out a yellow cardboard box. "KILZEM. It's twenty-three cents, but it's worth it."
A grey, calloused claw came out from within the shawl and closed on the box. The woman peered at its ornate label.
"Harmless," she breathed, "to pets or humans. Harmless." She put the container down. "It is no use to me."
"Why not? Mix it with cheese and put it near their holes and the rats will eat it and die. That is what you want, isn't it?"
"No. The rat I wish to kill is—" paper-thin lips twitched venomously—"human."
"You should have said so." Turner's countenance was placid, except for a minute narrowing of his faded blue eyes. "How was I to know?"
"Do I look like one who would kill a dumb beast that does nothing wrong except steal a little food?"
