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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
- Serie: Dime Mystery Magazine
- Sprache: Englisch
The Little Walking Corpses by Arthur Leo Zagat is a spine-tingling journey into the macabre and the mysterious. When a series of inexplicable events begins to unravel in a small town, the residents are faced with their darkest fears. Children are found in a trance-like state, seemingly under the control of an unknown force, and the town is plagued by eerie sightings of the "walking corpses." As the mystery deepens, a determined investigator races against time to uncover the sinister truth behind these haunting phenomena. Will they solve the enigma before the town succumbs to utter horror? Immerse yourself in this gripping tale of supernatural dread and uncover the truth behind the chilling phenomenon.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
The Little Walking Corpses
I. — FEAR COMES TO STANEVILLE
II. — DEATH IN THE GRAVEYARD
III. — THE SHAPE IN THE DUSK
IV. — DISCOVERY
V. — STING OF THE HUGE BLACK WASP
VI. — WITHIN THE PRECIPICE
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Little Walking Corpses
I. — FEAR COMES TO STANEVILLE
FEAR was a living presence in the streets of Staneville. It was visible in the pallor that underlay the weather-beaten countenances of the small town's inhabitants, in the furtive glances with which their eyes, bloodshot by sleeplessness, searched every chance-met face with suspicion and challenge.
Worst of all, it was manifest in the flare of their nostrils as eternally they tested for an alien taint a breeze otherwise fragrant with the crisp autumn tang of the forest that coated Buzzard Mountain.
The odor of death was what they sought and found; the stench of a corpse from whose bones the flesh sloughed, moldering.
On Thursday the smell was faint as the smoke-haze from some brush fire the wardens fought where the Range dipped below the northern horizon. Between Monday and Tuesday last, it had been a fetid reek flooding a moonless midnight in which the shrill of the cicadas was stilled, and the countless small noises that make up the country's nocturnal hush were utterly absent.
No one in Staneville had not been waked by that sudden cessation of all sound. None there was who had not lain for interminable minutes stifled as by a noisome, intangible palm folded over nose and mouth while the darkness, pressing against the houses, throbbed with the beat of vast, unseeable wings.
Rousing to a breathless, sultry dawn, none at first knew his nocturnal experience to be other than a peculiarly vivid nightmare. Then the shadow of a charnal stench drifted into opened windows of the houses on the Slope, into the drab shanties of Frog Hollow, and faces turned questioningly to one another.
In dark pupils the knowledge grew that what had passed in the night had not been a dream, but before paling lips could form the words trembling upon them a scream shrilled through the hamlet.
Knife-like where the woods stretch the tentacles of their underbrush toward the last white dwellings of the well-to-do; distance-dulled yet still startling in the lowly slum west of Main Street; it pulled all Staneville into the open, and streams of half-dressed humanity frothed up the steep eastward ascent to Oxford Lane.
Pouring into the Lane they saw the woman on the trim lawn before her cottage, her countenance contorted, her dark hair a tumbled storm on nude shoulders, her arms outflung and imploring.
Sun-blaze striking through a gossamer nightgown stripped her taut body of all concealment, its broad hips and full-formed breasts, its rounded, sturdy thighs; but no one saw her as a naked woman, only as a frantic and terrified mother. For now that they were near, the scream formed into an intelligible shrill call.
"Dickie! Where are you Dickie? Dick!"
"It's Jane Horn," the word passed back to those who could not yet see nor hear. "She's screaming for her little Dickie."
Icy fingers closed on every heart at the mention of misfortune to the freckle-faced, tow-headed ten-year-old, whose cheery whistle and twinkling eyes everyone in the village knew.
Cole Simpson was already at the gate, his gaunt fingers on its latch, having beaten them there because his was the next house to the Horn's. He twisted to the fore-runners and flung at them a barked command.
"Stay back! I'll take care of this."
He went through onto the lawn, his slippers flapping on the dew-wet grass, his tall, spare figure clothed only in trousers and long-sleeved undershirt, his iron-grey hair unkempt. Behind him the first of the crowd stopped short, thrusting back against others who halted in turn. A hush spread swiftly among them and although the woman's cries had died to a sobbing whimper it was distinctly heard by even the farthest removed.
Distinctly heard too was Simpson's voice, strangely gentle, not dry and harsh as was its wont. "What is it, Jane?" The woman's head turned to him but there was no recognition in her eyes.
"Jane!" Simpson snapped sharply, grasping her elbow. "What's the matter?"
"Dick," the name ripped from her. "Gone!" With that she seemed to break up, the tenseness leaving her, her legs folding so that save for the dart of the man's arm about her waist, she would have crumpled to the ground.
"Listen," he said, his narrow, hallow-cheeked face more like grey granite than ever, "listen to me. You must hold yourself together. You must tell us exactly what has happened so that we can help you, so that we can find Dick for you. Tell us what you know."
Somewhere in the crowd a voice whispered, "That smell! It's stronger here..."
"Know?" Jane Horn was saying, looking at Simpson now, seeing him. "All I know is that I went to his room to wake him up and he wasn't there. Not there—nor anywhere."
"Maybe he sneaked out to go swimming before school, or for some other kid's nonsense."
"In his nightshirt? Barefoot? His shoes are there, all his clothes. And he wouldn't do that without telling me. Not my Dickie. Not while his father is away."
"Even your Dick might. He's a boy, after all, and thoughtless. Go into the house, my dear, and get something on. Meanwhile I'll look around. There will be footprints. The ground is soft and I've kept the people from trampling your lawn. Don't worry, we'll find him."
