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Delve into the dark and twisted world of Clark Ashton Smith's classic weird fiction with this full-length audiobook of "The Return of the Sorcerer." This chilling tale is a cornerstone of the cosmic horror genre, a masterful blend of the macabre and the mysterious that will keep you on the edge of your seat. Written by a titan of the pulp era alongside H.P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, this story follows the scholarly John Carnby as he takes a position assisting the enigmatic and reclusive sorcerer, Helman. Carnby quickly discovers that his new employer's obsession with ancient texts and necromancy has led him down a terrifying path, culminating in a grotesque and unforgettable climax.
This SEO-optimized presentation is perfect for fans of classic horror, weird fiction, and the Cthulhu Mythos. Whether you're a longtime admirer of Clark Ashton Smith's prose or are new to his unique brand of fantasy and horror, this story is a must-listen. The narrative's focus on forbidden knowledge, the uncanny, and the grotesque makes it a perfect entry point into the genre. Keywords such as "Clark Ashton Smith audiobook," "weird fiction," "cosmic horror," and "classic horror stories" are included to help you find this and other similar masterpieces.
This SEO-optimized presentation is perfect for fans of classic horror, weird fiction, and the Cthulhu Mythos. Whether you're a longtime admirer of Clark Ashton Smith's prose or are new to his unique brand of fantasy and horror, this story is a must-listen. The narrative's focus on forbidden knowledge, the uncanny, and the grotesque makes it a perfect entry point into the genre. Keywords such as "Clark Ashton Smith audiobook," "weird fiction," "cosmic horror," and "classic horror stories" are included to help you find this and other similar masterpieces.
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00:00Gates of Imagination presents The Return of the Sorcerer by Clark Ashton Smith
00:07Read by Josh Greenwood
00:09I had been out of work for several months and my savings were perilously near the vanishing point.
00:18Therefore I was naturally elated when I received from John Carnby a favorable answer inviting me
00:24to present my qualifications in person. Carnby had advertised for a secretary,
00:30stipulating that all applicants must offer a preliminary statement of their capacities by
00:35letter, and I had written in response to the advertisement. Carnby no doubt was a scholarly
00:41recluse who felt averse to contact with a long waiting list of strangers, and he had chosen
00:46this manner of weeding out beforehand many, if not all, of those who were ineligible. He had specified
00:53his requirements fully and succinctly, and these were of such nature as to bar even the average
00:59well-educated person. A knowledge of Arabic was necessary, among other things, and luckily
01:06I had acquired a certain degree of scholarship in this unusual tongue.
01:10I found the address, of whose location I had formed only a vague idea, at the end of a hilltop
01:17avenue in the suburbs of Oakland. It was a large two-story house, overshaded by ancient oaks and
01:24dark with a mantling of unchecked ivy, among hedges of unpruned privet and shrubbery that had gone wild
01:31for many years. It was separated from its neighbors by a vacant, weed-grown lot on one side and a tangle
01:38of vines and trees on the other, surrounding the black ruins of a burnt mansion. Even apart from its air of
01:44long neglect, there was something drear and dismal about the place, something that adhered in the ivy-blurred
01:51outlines of the house, in the furtive, shadowy windows, and the very forms of the misshapen oaks
01:57and oddly sprawling shrubbery. Somehow, my elation became a trifle less exuberant as I entered the
02:04grounds and followed an unswept path to the front door. When I found myself in the presence of John
02:10Carnby, my jubilation was still somewhat further diminished, though I could not have given a
02:16tangible reason for the premonitory chill, the dull, sombre feeling of alarm that I experienced,
02:22and the leaden sinking of my spirits. Perhaps it was the dark library in which he received me as
02:28much as the man himself, a room whose musty shadows could never have been wholly dissipated by sun or
02:35lamplight. Indeed, it must have been this, for John Carnby himself was very much the sort of person I had
02:43pictured him to be. He had all the earmarks of the lonely scholar who has devoted patient years to some
02:50line of erudite research. He was thin and bent, with a massive forehead and a mane of grizzled hair,
02:58and the pallor of the library was on his hollow, clean-shaven cheeks. But coupled with this,
03:04there was a nerve-shattered air, a fearful shrinking that was more than the normal shyness of a recluse,
03:11and an unceasing apprehensiveness that betrayed itself in every glance of his dark-ringed,
03:18feverish eyes and every movement of his bony hands. In all likelihood his health had been
03:24seriously impaired by over-application, and I could not help but wonder at the nature of the
03:29studies that had made him a tremulous wreck. But there was something about him, perhaps the width
03:36of his bowed shoulders and the bold aquilinity of his facial outlines, which gave the impression of
03:41great former strength and a vigour not yet wholly exhausted. His voice was unexpectedly deep and
03:49sonorous. I think you will do, Mr. Ogden? He said, after a few formal questions, most of which related
03:58to my linguistic knowledge, and in particular, my mastery of Arabic. Your labours will not be very
04:07heavy, but I want someone who can be on hand at any time required. Therefore you must live with me.
04:14I can give you a comfortable room, and I guarantee that my cooking will not poison you. I often work
04:20at night, and I hope you will not find the irregular hours too disagreeable. No doubt I should have been
04:27overjoyed at this assurance that the secretarial position was to be mine. Instead, I was aware of a
04:34dim, unreasoning reluctance and an obscure forewarning of evil as I thanked John Carnby and told him that I
04:41was ready to move in whenever he desired. He appeared to be greatly pleased, and the queer
04:47apprehensiveness went out of his manner for a moment.
04:50Come immediately. This very afternoon if you can, he said. I shall be very glad to have you, and the
04:56sooner the better. I have been living entirely alone for some time, and I must confess that the
05:01solitude is beginning to pall upon me. Also, I have been retarded in my labours for lack of the proper
05:07help. My brother used to live with me and assist me, but he has gone away on a long trip.
05:13I returned to my downtown lodgings, paid my rent with the last few dollars that remained to me,
05:20packed my belongings, and in less than an hour was back at my new employer's home.
05:25He assigned me a room on the second floor, which, though unaired and dusty, was more than luxurious
05:31in comparison with the hall bedroom that failing funds had compelled me to inhabit for some time
05:36past. Then he took me to his own study, which was on the same floor, at the further end of the hall.
05:43Here, he explained to me, most of my future work would be done.
05:48I could hardly restrain an exclamation of surprise as I viewed the interior of this chamber.
05:53It was very much as I should have imagined the den of some old sorcerer to be. There were tables strewn
05:59with archaic instruments of doubtful use, with astrological charts with skulls and alembics and
06:05crystals, with sensors such as are used in the Catholic Church, and volumes bound in worm-eaten
06:10leather with vertigree-mottled clasps. In one corner stood the skeleton of a large ape, in another,
06:17a human skeleton, and overhead a stuffed crocodile was suspended.
06:20There were cases overpiled with books, and even a cursory glance at the titles showed me that they
06:27formed a singularly comprehensive collection of ancient and modern works on demonology and the
06:33black arts. There were some weird paintings and etchings on the walls, dealing with kindred themes,
06:40and the whole atmosphere of the room exhaled a medley of half-forgotten superstitions.
06:45Ordinarily, I would have smiled when confronted with such things. But somehow, in this lonely,
06:52dismal house, beside the neurotic, hag-ridden Carnby, it was difficult for me to repress an
06:58actual shudder. On one of the tables, contrasting incongruously with this melange of medievalism
07:04and Satanism, there stood a typewriter, surrounded with piles of disorderly manuscript.
07:09At one end of the room there was a small, curtained alcove with a bed in which Carnby slept. At the
07:16end opposite the alcove, between the human and simian skeletons, I perceived a locked cupboard
07:22that was set in the wall. Carnby had noted my surprise, and was watching me with a keen,
07:29analytic expression which I found impossible to fathom. He began to speak in explanatory tones.
07:35I have made a life study of demonism and sorcery, he declared. It is a fascinating field,
07:45and one that is singularly neglected. I am now preparing a monograph, in which I am trying to
07:51correlate the magical practices and demon worship of every known age and people. Your labors, at least
07:58for a while, will consist in typing and arranging the voluminous preliminary notes which I have made,
08:04and in helping me to track down other references and correspondences. Your knowledge of Arabic will
08:10be invaluable to me, for I am none too well grounded in this language myself, and I am depending for
08:15certain essential data on a copy of the Necronomicon in the original Arabic text. I have reason to think
08:21that there are certain omissions and erroneous renderings in the Latin version of Olaus Wormiuses.
08:26I had heard of this rare, well-nigh fabulous volume, but had never seen it. The book was supposed to
08:34contain the ultimate secrets of evil and forbidden knowledge, and moreover, the original text,
08:40written by the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, was said to be unprocurable. I wondered how it had come into
08:48Carnaby's possession. I'll show you the volume after dinner, Carnaby went on. You will doubtless
08:54be able to elucidate one or two passages that have long puzzled me. The evening meal, cooked and served
09:00by my employer himself, was a welcome change from cheap restaurant fare. Carnaby seemed to have lost
09:07a good deal of his nervousness. He was very talkative, and even began to exhibit a certain
09:13scholarly gaiety after we had shared a bottle of mellow sauternes. Still, with no manifest reason,
09:21I was troubled by intimations and forebodings which I could neither analyse nor trace to their
09:26rightful source. We returned to the study, and Carnaby brought out from a locked drawer the volume of
09:33which he had spoken. It was enormously old, and was bound in ebony covers arabesked with silver,
09:40and set with darkly glowing garnets. When I opened the yellowing pages, I drew back with
09:47involuntary revulsion at the odour which arose from them. An odour that was more than suggestive
09:53of physical decay, as if the book had lain among corpses in some forgotten graveyard and had taken on
09:59the taint of dissolution. Carnaby's eyes were burning with a fevered light as he took the old
10:04manuscript from my hands and turned to a page near the middle. He indicated a certain passage with
10:10his lean forefinger. Tell me what you make of this, he said in a tense, excited whisper.
10:18I deciphered the paragraph, slowly and with some difficulty, and wrote down a rough English version
10:25with the pad and pencil which Carnaby offered me. Then, at his request, I read it aloud.
10:31It is verily known by few, but is nevertheless no attestable fact, that the will of a dead sorcerer
10:41hath power upon his own body, and can raise it up from the tomb, and perform therewith whatever
10:46action was unfulfilled in life. And such resurrections are invariably for the doing of malevolent deeds,
10:54and for the detriment of others. Most readily can the corpse be animated if all its members have
11:00remained intact. And yet there are cases in which the excelling will of the wizard hath reared up from
11:06death the sundered pieces of a body hewn in many fragments, and hath caused them to serve his end,
11:12either separately or in a temporary reunion. But in every instance, after the action hath been completed,
11:19the body lapseth into its former state. Of course, all this was errant gibberish.
11:27Probably it was the strange, unhealthy look of utter absorption with which my employer listened,
11:32more than that damnable passage from the Necronomicon, which caused my nervousness and
11:38made me start violently when, toward the end of my reading, I heard an indescribable slithering noise
11:44in the hall outside. But when I finished the paragraph and looked up at Carnby, I was more
11:49startled by the expression of stark, staring fear which his features had assumed, an expression as
11:56of one who is haunted by some hellish phantom. Somehow I got the feeling that he was listening
12:02to that odd noise in the hallway rather than to my translation of Abdul al-Hazred.
12:08The house is full of rats, he explained, as he caught my inquiring glance. I have never been
12:14able to get rid of them with all my efforts. The noise, which still continued, was that which a rat
12:21might make in dragging some object slowly along the floor. It seemed to draw closer, to approach the door
12:27of Carnby's room, and then, after an intermission, it began to move again, and receded.
12:33My employer's agitation was marked. He listened with fearful intentness, and seemed to follow the
12:42progress of the sound with a terror that mounted as it drew near and decreased a little with its
12:47recession. I am very nervous, he said. I have worked too hard lately, and this is the result.
12:54Even a little noise upsets me. The sound had now died away somewhere in the house.
12:59Carnby appeared to recover himself in a measure. Will you please re-read your translation,
13:08he requested. I want to follow it very carefully, word by word. I obeyed.
13:16He listened with the same look of unholy absorption as before, and this time we were not interrupted by
13:23any noises in the hallway. Carnby's face grew paler, as if the last remnant of blood had been
13:29drained from it when I read the final sentences, and the fire in his hollow eyes was like phosphorescence
13:36in a deep vault.
13:38That is a most remarkable passage, he commented. I was doubtful about its meaning with my imperfect
13:44Arabic. And I have found that the passage is wholly omitted in the Latin of Olaus Wormius.
13:50Thank you for your scholarly rendering. You have certainly cleared it up for me. His tone was dry
13:58and formal, as if he were repressing himself and holding back a world of unsurmisable thoughts and
14:03emotions. Somehow I felt that Carnby was more nervous and upset than ever, and also that my rendering from
14:11the Necronomicon had, in some mysterious manner, contributed to his perturbation. He wore a ghastly,
14:18brooding expression, as if his mind were busy with some unwelcome and forbidden theme. However,
14:24seeming to collect himself, he asked me to translate another passage. This turned out to be a singular,
14:31incantatory formula for the exorcism of the dead, with a ritual that involved the use of rare Arabian
14:37spices and the proper intoning of at least a hundred names of ghouls and demons. I copied it all out for
14:43Carnby, who studied it for a long time with a rapt eagerness that was more than scholarly.
14:49That, too, he observed, is not in Olaus Wormius. After perusing it again, he folded the paper carefully,
14:58and put it away in the same drawer from which he had taken the Necronomicon.
15:02That evening was one of the strangest I have ever spent. As we sat for hour after hour discussing
15:09renditions from that unhallowed volume, I came to know more and more definitely that my employer was
15:15mortally afraid of something. That he dreaded being alone, and was keeping me with him on this account
15:21rather than for any other reason. Always he seemed to be waiting and listening with a painful,
15:27tortured expectation, and I saw that he gave only a mechanical awareness to much that was said.
15:33Among the weird appurtenances of the room, in that atmosphere of unmanifested evil,
15:39of untold horror, the rational part of my mind began to succumb slowly to a recrudescence of dark
15:47ancestral fears. A scorner of such things in my normal moments. I was now ready to believe in the
15:55most baleful creations of superstitious fancy. No doubt, by some process of mental contagion,
16:01I had caught the hidden terror from which Carnby suffered.
16:06By no word or syllable, however, did the man admit the actual feelings that were evident in
16:12his demeanor. But he spoke repeatedly of a nervous ailment. More than once during our discussion,
16:19he sought to imply that his interest in the supernatural and the satanic was wholly intellectual,
16:25that he, like myself, was without personal belief in such things.
16:29Yet I knew infallibly that his implications were false, that he was driven and obsessed by a real
16:36faith in all that he pretended to view with scientific detachment, and had doubtless been a
16:41victim to some imaginary horror entailed by his occult researches. But my intuition afforded me no clue to
16:48the actual nature of this horror. There was no repetition of the sounds that had been so disturbing to my
16:54employer. We must have sat till after midnight with the writings of the mad Arab open before us. At last,
17:02Carnby seemed to realize the lateness of the hour.
17:05I fear I have kept you up too long, he said apologetically. You must go and get some sleep.
17:13I am selfish, and I forget that such hours are not habitual to others as they are to me.
17:18I made the formal denial of his self-impeachment, which courtesy required, said good-night, and
17:26sought my own chamber with a feeling of intense relief. It seemed to me that I would leave behind
17:32me in Carnby's room all the shadowy fear and oppression to which I had been subjected.
17:38Only one light was burning in the long passage. It was near Carnby's door, and my own door at the
17:45further end, close to the stairhead, was in deep shadow. As I groped for the knob, I heard a noise
17:52behind me, and turned to see in the gloom a small, indistinct body that sprang from the hall landing to
17:58the top stair, disappearing from view. I was horribly startled, for even in that vague, fleeting glimpse,
18:07the thing was much too pale for a rat and its form was not at all suggestive of an animal.
18:13I could not have sworn what it was, but the outlines had seemed unmentionably monstrous.
18:20I stood trembling violently in every limb, and heard on the stairs a singular bumping sound like
18:26the fall of an object rolling downward from step to step. The sound was repeated at regular intervals,
18:33and finally ceased. If the safety of the soul and body had depended upon it, I could not have turned on
18:39the stairlight, nor could I have gone to the top steps to ascertain the agency of that unnatural
18:44bumping. Anyone else, it might seem, would have done this. Instead, after a moment of virtual
18:52petrification, I entered my room, locked the door, and went to bed in a turmoil of unresolved doubt and
18:58equivocal terror. I left the light burning, and I lay awake for hours, expecting momentarily a recurrence
19:06of that abominable sound. But the house was as silent as a morgue, and I heard nothing.
19:14At length, in spite of my anticipations to the contrary, I fell asleep and did not awake until
19:20after many sodden, dreamless hours. It was ten o'clock, as my watch informed me. I wondered whether
19:28my employer had left me undisturbed through thoughtfulness, or had not arisen himself.
19:34I dressed and went downstairs to find him waiting at the breakfast table. He was paler and more
19:40tremulous than ever, as if he had slept badly.
19:44I hope the rats didn't annoy you too much, he remarked, after a preliminary greeting.
19:50Something really must be done about them.
19:55I didn't notice them at all, I replied.
19:59Somehow, it was utterly impossible for me to mention the queer, ambiguous thing which I had
20:04seen and heard on retiring the night before. Doubtless I had been mistaken. Doubtless it had
20:10been merely a rat after all, dragging something down the stairs. I tried to forget the hideously
20:16repeated noise and the momentary flash of unthinkable outlines in the gloom.
20:22My employer eyed me with uncanny sharpness, as if he sought to penetrate my inmost mind.
20:30Breakfast was a dismal affair, and the day that followed was no less dreary.
20:35Carnby isolated himself till the middle of the afternoon, and I was left to my own devices in
20:41the well-supplied but conventional library downstairs.
20:44What Carnby was doing alone in his room I could not surmise. But I thought more than once that I
20:51heard the faint, monotonous intonations of a solemn voice. Horror-breeding hints and
20:57noisome intuitions invaded my brain. More and more the atmosphere of that house enveloped and
21:04stifled me with poisonous, miasmal mystery, and I felt everywhere the invisible brooding of malignant
21:10incubi. It was almost a relief when my employer summoned me to his study.
21:18Entering, I noticed that the air was full of a pungent, aromatic smell, and was touched by the
21:25vanishing coils of a blue vapour, as if from the burning of oriental gums and spices in the church
21:32censors. An Ispahan rug had been moved from its position near the wall to the centre of the room,
21:38but was not sufficient to cover entirely a curving violet mark that suggested the drawing of a magic
21:45circle on the floor. No doubt Carnby had been performing some sort of incantation, and I thought
21:51of the awesome formula I had translated at his request. However, he did not offer any explanation
21:57of what he had been doing. His manner had changed remarkably and was more controlled and confident
22:03than at any former time. In a fashion almost business-like, he laid before me a pile of
22:09manuscript which he wanted me to type for him. The familiar click of the keys aided me somewhat in
22:15dismissing any apprehensions of vague evil, and I could almost smile at the recherche and terrific
22:20information comprised in my employer's notes, which dealt mainly with formulae for the acquisition of
22:25unlawful power. But still, beneath my reassurance, there was a vague, lingering disquietude.
22:33Evening came, and after our meal we returned again to the study. There was a tenseness in
22:39Carnby's manner now, as if he were eagerly awaiting the result of some hidden test.
22:44I went on with my work, but some of his emotion communicated itself to me, and ever and anon I caught
22:51myself in an attitude of strained listening. At last, above the click of the keys, I heard the
22:58peculiar slithering in the hall. Carnby had heard it too, and his confident look utterly vanished,
23:05giving place to the most pitiable fear. The sound drew nearer and was followed by a dull,
23:11dragging noise, and then by more sounds of an unidentifiable slithering and scuttling nature
23:17that varied in loudness. The hall was seemingly full of them, as if a whole army of rats were
23:23hauling some carrion booty along the floor. And yet no rodent or number of rodents could have made such
23:29sounds, or could have moved anything so heavy as the object which came behind the rest.
23:34There was something in the character of those noises, something without name or definition,
23:39which caused a slowly creeping chill to invade my spine.
23:42Good Lord! What is all that racket? I cried. The rats! I tell you, it is only the rats!
23:51Carnby's voice was a high, hysterical shriek. A moment later, there came an unmistakable knocking
23:57on the door, near the sill. At the same time, I heard a heavy thudding in the locked cupboard at
24:03the further end of the room. Carnby had been standing erect, but now he sank limply into a chair.
24:10His features were ashen, and his look was almost maniacal with fright. The nightmare doubt and
24:16tension became unbearable, and I ran to the door and flung it open in spite of a frantic
24:22remonstrance from my employer. I had no idea what I should find as I stepped across the sill into the
24:27dim-lit hall. When I looked down and saw the thing on which I had almost trodden, my feeling was one of
24:33sick amazement and actual nausea. It was a human hand which had been severed at the wrist, a bony,
24:39bluish hand like that of a weak-old corpse, with garden-mould on the fingers and under the long nails.
24:45The damnable thing had moved. It had drawn back to avoid me, and was crawling along the passage
24:51somewhat in the manner of a crab. And following it with my gaze, I saw that there were other things
24:57beyond it, one of which I recognized as a man's foot, and another as a forearm. I dared not look
25:05at the rest. All were moving slowly, hideously away in a charnel procession. And I cannot describe
25:13the fashion in which they moved. Their individual vitality horrifying beyond endurance. It was more
25:20than the vitality of life, yet the air was laden with a carrion taint. I averted my eyes and stepped
25:28back into Carnby's room, closing the door behind me with a shaking hand. Carnby was at my side with
25:36the key, which he turned in the lock with palsy-stricken fingers that had become as feeble
25:41as those of an old man. You saw them? he asked in a dry, quavering whisper. In God's name, what does
25:49it all mean? I cried. Carnby went back to his chair, tottering a little with weakness. His lineaments were
25:58agonized by the gnawing of some inward horror, and he shook visibly like an ague patient.
26:03I sat down in a chair beside him, and he began to stammer forth his unbelievable confession,
26:12half incoherently, with inconsequential mouthings and many breaks and pauses.
26:17He is stronger than I am, even in death, even with his body dismembered by the surgeon's knife
26:24and saw that I used. I thought he could not return after that, after I had buried the portions in a
26:31dozen different places, in the cellar, beneath the shrubs, at the foot of the ivy vines.
26:38But the Necronomicon is right, and Hellman Carnby knew it. He warned me before I killed him.
26:45He told me he could return, even in that condition. But I did not believe him. I hated Hellman,
26:55and he hated me too. He had attained to higher power and knowledge, and was more favored by
27:01the dark ones than I. That was why I killed him. My own twin brother. And my brother in the service
27:09of Satan, and of those who were before Satan. We had studied together for many years. We had
27:16celebrated the Black Mass together, and we were attended by the same familiars. But Hellman Carnby
27:23had gone deeper into the occult, into the forbidden, where I could not follow him. I feared him,
27:29and I could not endure his supremacy. It is more than a week. It is ten days since I did the deed.
27:37But Hellman, or some part of him, has returned every night. God. His accursed hands crawling on the
27:46floor. His feet, his arms, the segments of his legs, climbing the stairs in some unmentionable way
27:53to haunt me. Christ. His awful, bloody torso lying in wait. I tell you, his hands have come even by day
28:03to tap and fumble at my door. And I have stumbled over his arms in the dark. Oh God. I shall go mad
28:11with the awfulness of it. But he wants me to go mad. He wants to torture me till my brain gives way.
28:17That is why he haunts me in this piecemeal fashion. He could end it all any time with the
28:22demoniacal power that is his. He could re-knit his sundered limbs and body and slay me as I slew him.
28:29How carefully I buried the parts, with what infinite forethought. And how useless it was. I buried the
28:37saw and knife, too, at the farther end of the garden, as far away as possible from his evil,
28:42itching hands. But I did not bury the head with the other pieces. I kept it in that cupboard at
28:49the end of my room. Sometimes I have heard it moving there, as you heard it a little while ago.
28:56But he does not need the head. His will is elsewhere, and can work intelligently through
29:02all his members. Of course, I locked all the doors and windows at night when I found that he was coming
29:09back. But it made no difference. And I have tried to exorcise him with the appropriate incantations.
29:16With all those that I knew. Today, I tried that sovereign formula from the Necronomicon which you
29:23translated for me. I got you here to translate it. Also, I could no longer bear to be alone.
29:30And I thought that it might help if there were someone else in the house.
29:33That formula was my last hope. I thought it would hold him. It is a most ancient and most
29:41dreadful incantation. But, as you have seen, it is useless. His voice trailed off in a broken
29:51mumble, and he sat staring before him with sightless, intolerable eyes in which I saw the
29:58beginning flare of madness. I could say nothing. The confession he had made was so ineffably atrocious.
30:07The moral shock and the ghastly supernatural horror had almost stupefied me. My sensibilities were
30:14stunned, and it was not till I had begun to recover that I felt the irresistible surge of a flood of
30:20loathing for the man beside me. I rose to my feet. The house had grown very silent, as if the macabre and
30:28charnel army of beleaguermint had now retired to its various graves. Carnby had left the key in the
30:34lock, and I went to the door and turned it quickly. Are you leaving? Don't go, Carnby begged in a voice
30:41that was tremulous with alarm, as I stood with my hand on the doorknob.
30:44Yes, I am going, I said coldly. I am resigning my position right now, and I intend to pack my
30:52belongings and leave your house with as little delay as possible. I opened the door and went out,
30:59refusing to listen to the arguments and pleadings and protestations he had begun to babble.
31:04For the nonce, I preferred to face whatever might lurk in the gloomy passage, no matter how loathsome
31:11and terrifying, rather than endure any longer the society of John Carnby. The hall was empty,
31:19but I shuddered with repulsion at the memory of what I had seen as I hastened to my room.
31:24I think I should have screamed aloud at the least sound or movement in the shadows.
31:30I began to pack my valise with a feeling of the most frantic urgency and compulsion.
31:35It seemed to me that I could not escape soon enough from that house of abominable secrets
31:41over which hung an atmosphere of smothering menace. I made mistakes in my haste, I stumbled
31:47over chairs, and my brain and fingers grew numb with a paralyzing dread. I had almost finished my
31:54task when I heard the sound of slow, measured footsteps coming up the stairs. I knew that it
32:00was not Carnby, for he had locked himself immediately in his room when I had left, and I felt sure that
32:06nothing could have tempted him to emerge. Anyway, he could hardly have gone downstairs without my
32:11hearing him. The footsteps came to the top landing and went past my door along the hall, with that
32:17same dead monotonous repetition, regular as the movement of a machine. Certainly it was not the soft,
32:24nervous tread of John Carnby. Who then could it be? My blood stood still in my veins. I dared not finish
32:32the speculation that arose in my mind. The steps paused, and I knew that they had reached the door
32:40of Carnby's room. There followed an interval in which I could scarcely breathe, and then I heard an awful
32:46crashing and shattering noise, and above it the soaring scream of a man in the uttermost extremity of fear.
32:54I was powerless to move, as if an unseen iron hand had reached forth to restrain me, and I have no
33:02idea how long I waited and listened. The scream had fallen away in a swift silence, and I heard nothing
33:10now, except a low, peculiar, recurrent sound which my brain refused to identify. It was not my own
33:18volition, but a stronger will than mine, which drew me forth at last and impelled me down the hall to
33:24Carnby's study. I felt the presence of that will as an overpowering, superhuman thing, a demoniac force,
33:32a malign mesmerism. The door of the study had been broken in and was hanging by one hinge. It was
33:37splintered, as by the impact of more than mortal strength. A light was still burning in the room,
33:43and the unmentionable sound I had been hearing ceased as I neared the threshold. It was followed
33:48by an evil, utter stillness. Again I paused, and could go no further. But this time, it was something
33:56other than the hellish, all-pervading magnetism that petrified my limbs and arrested me before the
34:02sill. Peering into the room, in the narrow space that was framed by the doorway and lit by an unseen
34:08lamp, I saw one end of the oriental rug and the gruesome outlines of a monstrous, unmoving shadow
34:14that fell beyond it on the floor. Huge, elongated, misshapen, the shadow was seemingly cast by the
34:22arms and torso of a naked man who stooped forward with a surgeon's saw in his hand. Its monstrosity lay
34:29in this. Though the shoulders, chest, abdomen, and arms were all clearly distinguishable, the shadow
34:36was headless and appeared to terminate in an abruptly severed neck. It was impossible, considering the
34:43relative position, for the head to have been concealed from sight through any manner of foreshortening.
34:49I waited, powerless to enter or withdraw. The blood had flowed back upon my heart in an ice-thick
34:56tide, and thought was frozen in my brain. An interval of termless horror, and then, from the
35:04hidden end of Carnby's room, from the direction of the locked cupboard, there came a fearsome and
35:09violent crash, and the sound of splintering wood and whining hinges, followed by the sinister,
35:15dismal thud of an unknown object striking the floor. Again there was silence, a silence as of
35:23consummated evil brooding above its unnameable triumph. The shadow had not stirred. There was
35:30a hideous contemplation in its attitude, and the saw was still held in its poising hand, as if above a
35:36completed task. Another interval, and then, without warning, I witnessed the awful and unexplainable
35:44disintegration of the shadow, which seemed to break gently and easily into many different shadows,
35:51ere it faded from view. I hesitate to describe the manner, or specify the places, in which this
35:58singular disruption, this manifold cleavage, occurred. Simultaneously, I heard the muffled clatter of a
36:07metallic implement on the Persian rug, and a sound that was not that of a single body, but of many
36:13bodies falling. Once more, there was silence. A silence as of some nocturnal cemetery, when grave
36:22diggers and ghouls are done with their macabre toil, and the dead alone remain. Drawn by that baleful
36:30mesmerism, like a somnambulist led by an unseen demon, I entered the room. I knew with a loathly prescience
36:38the sight that awaited me beyond the sill. The double heap of human segments, some of them fresh
36:45and bloody, and others already blue with beginning putrefaction and marked with earth stains, that were
36:50mingled in abhorrent confusion on the rug. A reddened knife and saw were protruding from the pile.
36:57And a little to one side, between the rug and the open cupboard with its shattered door,
37:02there reposed a human head that was fronting the other remnants in an upright posture.
37:06It was in the same condition of incipient decay as the body to which it had belonged.
37:13But I swear that I saw the fading of a malignant exultation from its features as I entered.
37:18Even with the marks of corruption upon them, the lineaments bore a manifest likeness of John
37:24Carnby, and plainly they could belong only to a twin brother.
37:30The frightful inferences that smothered my brain with their black and clammy cloud
37:34are not to be written here. The horror which I beheld and the greater horror which I surmised
37:41would have put to shame hell's foulest enormities in their frozen pits. There was but one mitigation
37:49and one mercy. I was compelled to gaze only for a few instants on that intolerable scene.
37:58Then, all at once, I felt that something had withdrawn from the room. The malign spell was broken, the
38:06overpowering volition that had held me captive was gone. It had released me now, even as it had released
38:14the dismembered corpse of Hellman Carnby. I was free to go, and I fled from the ghastly chamber
38:21and ran headlong through an unlit house and into the outer darkness of the night.
38:44I was где-orised him as we were briefly even more and a half. The frightened someone cut from the
38:51December 19th August Now.
38:52Into this phase of hell was kept in Mmmm to invite me to talk.
38:55About time to give out the König the RuCR VA
38:58but now it's gotten Jill there.
39:01I was like, yes, stitch off.
39:03I取u一起 to talk.
39:05There is a scene about a and開始 to show, and I don't care.
39:09I make my parents who you have a projection of gall G Guinness.
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