Erhalten Sie Zugang zu diesem und mehr als 300000 Büchern ab EUR 5,99 monatlich.
- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Serie: Wonder Stories
- Sprache: Englisch
In The Tower of Evil, Arthur Leo Zagat takes readers on a spine-tingling journey to a remote, haunted fortress where ancient malevolence stirs. When a group of adventurers seeks refuge within its crumbling walls, they soon find themselves trapped in a nightmarish battle against unseen horrors and dark forces that defy reason. As they uncover the tower's sinister history, they must confront their deepest fears to survive the evil that lurks within. Filled with eerie suspense and pulse-pounding tension, this gripping tale is perfect for readers who enjoy dark mysteries and tales of courage in the face of supernatural dread.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 73
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Das E-Book (TTS) können Sie hören im Abo „Legimi Premium” in Legimi-Apps auf:
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
The Tower of Evil
The Tower of Evil
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
The Tower of Evil
The Tower of Evil
ONE of the most mysterious things to the members of the white race is the apparently occult power possessed by the Hindus. Their ability to perform many so called "magical" tricks, some of them astounding, have been a source of wonder to us for years.
No doubt a great deal of their power is pure trickery, but there is also a great deal of profound scientific knowledge at the basis of some. Whether they obtained their knowledge through some now extinct race, or whether it has been slowly accumulated through centuries of penetration of nature's secrets, we do not know.
Our authors, in presenting this story, are attempting to show some of the scientific truth that may lie behind so-called "magic." The Towers of Evil that they write of do really exist in Arabia, as Seabrook in his Adventures in Arabia so eloquently describes. Our authors have taken the facts and woven them into a most startling story, of mystery, intrigue and adventure.
Into Tibet he went to probe those strange stories. Behind the priests' tricks he saw a great power...
The Tower of Evil. Title Page
CHAPTER I
HEIGHT on height the rocky cliffs loomed, a mad jumble of purple and red, and mauve. Here, in the remote interior of Tibet, even the very hills wore fantastic colors.
Up through this devil's playground could be seen a narrow path writhing its way amidst the jumble of tinted boulders. Up and up it wound, until at last it plunged down into a narrow gorge, cleft as by a knife a thousand feet through.
"This is the worst yet!" exclaimed John Dunton, as for the tenth time his struggles started a miniature landslide in the shale. "I don't see how those two bearers of mine manage to wangle their loads over this stuff and keep their footing. Good thing it's near noon and the sun overhead, so that some light gets down here or—well, what now!"
Suddenly, as though some gigantic hand had thrown an enormous screen across the narrow top of the defile, the dim light illumining the path vanished. A blackness enveloped the traveler and his two native bearers. Then in the defile there rose a moan from an almost imperceptible whisper to a crescendo of terror, until the air vibrated with the wailing of an unspeakable agony. Cold it had been at this mountain height, but now an icy blast roared down the cleft as if a door had been opened to some gigantic refrigerator. Clammy hands plucked at Dunton, tore at his arms, strove to drag him down into the rapids.
When it seemed that human brain could no longer retain its sanity under the impact of the tortured scream and the icy blast, a sudden silence came. The wind dropped, the plucking hands ceased their efforts to drag the explorer down. The silence deepened, until it seemed to have a power of its own. An uncanny silence! Dunton could not even hear his own breathing, nor that of his bearers. Something seemed to press down on him, an almost physical weight of dread. The darkness was unrelieved.
But then as he stood uncertainly, in front of him there seemed to be a faint, almost insensible, lightening of the blackness. Was it so, or were his eyes deceiving him? Gradually, by the faintest of graduations, the luminescence strengthened, till Dunton could see floating directly in front of him a distinct and glowing cloud of light. A swirling, shapeless cloud of violet light, that cold violet which represents the very limit of the visible spectrum. The cloud swirled and eddied, and whirled about itself, drew itself together, slowly, until, not twenty feet before Dunton, towered a human figure of light.
It was not in Dunton's makeup to be afraid. Many a peril he had faced in his adventurous years wandering in the strange places of the earth. But now he trembled from some unnamable revulsion caused by the thing which he saw before him. Then a frenzy of hate seized him. Drawing his automatic, he sprang forward and opened fire. The sharp reports echoed and re-echoed from the cliffs, but the point-blank shots seemed to have no effect on that lama of light. Still he stood there with his ominous glance, his warning arm still upraised.
Two shrieks of terror behind him, a rapidly diminishing rattle of shale, and Dunton knew that his dark-skinned bearers had incontinently departed; they would take back to their village still another tale of horror about this mystic mountain land.
"I don't wonder they ran," he thought, as he surveyed the apparition barring the path. Ten feet tall, the figure stood, in the conical hat, the flowing robes, the skirted "shamtabs" of the Tibetan lamas. The beardless face was sternly set in a forbidding scowl. The right arm, hand extended, was raised in a gesture which clearly conveyed the message, "Go no further!" Motionless the giant figure stood, and the eyes, the entire form in fact, seemed to dominate the defile.
"So that's it!" Dunton grunted. "Well, we'll soon see whether you're real or not." Resuming his headlong rush, Dunton made straight for the figure. Suddenly his fierce attack was checked. Without warning, he had come up against an invisible but rigid barrier. He could see nothing, yet ten feet before he reached the evil image he had come up against a something that had resisted his drive. So sudden and unexpected was the check that he was sent crashing backward onto the shale. Bruised and bleeding, he leaped to his feet and again, rushed forward. Again he met the invisible barrier. Clubbing his automatic in his right hand, and grasping a long hunting knife in his left, he hammered frantically, and cut, and slashed at the Nothing which stayed him. But he could not approach the object of his wrath.
INTO THE PIT
AT last, exhausted, he paused. Glaring again at the mysterious lama, he saw it move for the first time. The arm was slowly descending, the outstretched fingers slowly closing. Down, down, came the arm until a long forefinger pointed straight at him.
Again Dunton rushed forward to the attack. Again he was thrown back by that invisible Nothingness. But this time, though he fell, he did not reach the ground. He felt himself lifted into the air by the same impalpable being he had been so vainly battling. At the same time all power of volition left his limbs; he could not move!
Like some dead leaf soaring on the bosom of the west wind he was borne aloft, straight up between the towering walls of that narrow defile, up again into the light of day. Higher and higher he rose, in great swooping spirals, until he saw revolving far below him the snow-capped peaks and grassy plateaus of mysterious Tibet. Then off like an arrow he moved toward a distant range of mountains—taller even than their brethren.
Only his vision and his acute brain were alive. The powerful body of this six-foot American was as useless, as immovable, as a felled log.
But barely had he a chance to gather his senses, when he found this impetuous rush slowing far above the range that had been its objective, spiralling downward now. Again the circling swoops set in. Below, he could see, set deep amidst a ring of high and unscalable cliffs, a grassy bowl. It was almost circular in shape, patterned with masses of flowers, cut by winding paths that centered about a white tower. That tower, rising sheer three hundred feet from the gardened plain, was unlike anything his wide journeying had brought to his view. Covering a circular area of a full acre, soaring high in alabaster beauty, it was topped by a huge sphere of burnished metal about one hundred feet in diameter. The glare of the sun's reflection from the tremendous ball blinded Dunton, but in his paralysis he could neither turn his gaze from it, nor relieve his seared eyeballs by dropping their lids.
