Dr. Creepen's Dungeon - S1 Ep23: Episode 23: I Heard a Demonic Voice in the Night

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Tonight's show is proudly sponsored by Jeff Wayne's The War of The Worlds: The Immersive Experience. Visit https://thewaroftheworldsimmersive.com/ and simply enter code CREEP at the checkout.   Get 20% Off and Free Shipping with the code CREEP at https://www.Manscaped.com - MANSCAPED is dedicated to helping you level up your full-body grooming game. How does a free case of 8 BELGIAN craft beers sound? Just go to https://www.beer52.com/Creep and cover the £5.95 postage and Beer52 will deliver them straight to your door. Today’s first fantastic offering is ‘The Black Cloud’ by Nick Moore, kindly shared with me via NoSleep and read here with the author’s express permission. https://www.reddit.com/user/nmwrites/ https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/ccorqq/the_black_cloud/ Today’s second fantastic offering is ‘The Voice in the Night’, a classic work by William Hope Hodgson, a story in the public domain, but recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Voice_in_the_Night   Today’s third tale of terror is ‘The Devil and Tom Walker’, a classic work by Washington Irving, another story in the public domain, also recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license:   https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Devil_and_Tom_Walker   We round off proceedings with the old school classic ‘The Isle of the Torturers’, a work by Clark Ashton Smith; again a story in the public domain, once more recorded here under the conditions of the CC-BY-SA license: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/The_Hunters_from_Beyond

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We believe OCT scans are so important they're included with every standard eye exam. Book an eye exam at Spexsavers.cavers.ca.caps are provided by independent optometrists. Visit Spexsavers.cavers. Welcome to Dr. Creepin's Dungeon, world of horror fiction. It shows us that the control we believe we have is purely illusory and that every moment we teeter on chaos and oblivion, as we will see in tonight's four tales of terror. Coming up later, we have The Voice in the Night by William Hope Hodgson,

The Devil and Tom Walker by Washington Irving, and the Isle of the Tortures by Clark Ashton Smith. But we open proceedings with the black cloud by Nick Moore. Now, as ever, before we begin, a word of caution. Tonight's stories may contain strong language, as well as descriptions of violence and horrific imagery. If that sounds like your kind of thing, then let's begin. Did you know that in 1911, Wolves killed a wedding party of 118 people in Russia?

The New York Times described the survivors seeing a black cloud moving rapidly toward them across the snowfield. Back of hundreds of starving wolves that slaughtered them while they travelled to what was supposed to be a celebratory banquet. I've been thinking about that story a lot lately. Well, I won't say where I am. The government's probably looking for leaks, and I need this warning to stay up for as long as possible.

The information is too important to keep hidden. Animals have been acting strangely for a while, skittish, like something had spooked them. The neighbours in our little rural village complained about the strange lights in the nights. We all had ideas, the kind of idle chat that we're really good at. The winter had been too warm. Maybe there were crews looking to build that factory in the next town, probably teenagers with those damn fireworks drinking beer and being stupid. The night it happened was a full moon.

I remember walking home from visiting a friend earlier in the evening and being amazed at how well-lit everything was in the moonlight. I was too far from the first attack to hear the screams, but the news the next day shocked me. Wolves had attacked a campsite nearby. Fifteen people had been killed and another eight injures. While this wasn't unheard of, the loss of life was extreme and we were all shocked by it.

However, there weren't any more attacks. People healed, and we mourned and then moved on. the second month was much worse. My neighbour's cousin had moved in after the attack so he could recuperate, and the neighbour had complained to no end about the inconvenience, by which he meant he couldn't hit his wife when he had a relative staying in his house. I heard his screams when it started. I remember looking at the window and seeing a giant wolf chasing him out of his house

and being frozen by the sight. It was too large, unnatural, deadly. I locked myself in the basement for the night and prayed for morning. Sunrise brought only an awful news and heartbreak. Our village was not large, and the 55 deaths shook it. Another 37 people were injured, and no one could explain how a pack of large wolves had descended across such a distance without being noticed, nor how so many of them had gotten into people's houses.

I began to hear dark whispers, rumors that the survivors had been touched with some dark curse that they were to blame for this. For the next month it seemed like we sat on a powder cake, the whole community counting down the days until the next full moon. Not sure how many people were killed that night. I know that the soldiers arrived the next morning and we were told that we were being relocated to a small city close by where we could be protected. Just a temporary safety measure while the government killed an especially violent pack of walls. After arriving in the city, and been expected for wounds by an army medic.

We wound up in makeshift shelters. Villages throughout the surrounding area had been emptied into the city, and anyone who'd been bitten by a wolf was moved to a special quarantine at some camp outside the city. I never saw any of those people again, but I assume they're now dead. I spent a long day in line waiting for an examination. Another day spent in line waiting for my allowance cards for food and water.

The third day I'd queue up. up for temporary housing and made a comment without thinking about how I'd still be in line when the next full moon rolled around. I've always been like that, prone to making comments without thinking. My last relationship ended when my girlfriend asked if I ever thought about getting married, and I said, no. The guard who heard me yanked me out of line, just as an old university classmate recognized me while walking by. Turns out he had an empty apartment I could use that was already furnished for once my mouth had worked in my favour. I glanced with glee as I walked away from the swirling serpentine line of people waiting for housing. The entire thing was a giant hectic mess.

Mistakes were made, well, mistakes were always made. The atmosphere in the city was chaotic. The local priests began to warn about how we were being punished by the gods. I stood in front of the churches and shouted that salvation lay within, that they often for the only protection from God's wrath. Soldiers with rifles stood on every corner. Again, the countdown to the full moon set everyone on edge. One of the largest churches announced it would serve as a sanctuary, locking their doors to protect the flock within.

I turned in early that night and barricaded the door. I don't know how many people in that church had been bitten, and I don't know what it must have been like when they turned, when the crowd realized they were locked in with them. I do remember the screams and the sirens outside I remember the explosions and gunfire in the distance I remember the next morning too with all inhabitants ordered to appear for inspection

watching those who'd been bitten being taken away and the morning after that when the soldiers were gone we were told that they built fortifications around the entire area a barricade to keep this problem in I heard they shot anyone approaching it We were alone now And there were other dangers beside the walls A group of hard men announced that they'd formed a local protection squad

They searched homes for people who'd been bitten And were being sheltered by protective families They beat those who they thought were hiding from them And collected weapons and food for distribution They were a hard drinking violent bunch And a citizen reused to tough rule buckle quickly. They hung those who they suspected of having been bitten throughout the city as a public show of how they would protect us. Well, the internet had been blocked since we'd

moved there, and every day I watched the news in vain hope that our situation had been noticed by the outside world. Second a city not my own, caught between a malicious ruling class and a pack of supernatural wars, I prayed for deliverance. On the night of the next four moon, we were all ordered entire rooms at 3pm, long before sundown. I heard that the protection squad had found a bunker they were safe in. Someone said that only the two titular leaders, Anton and Zander, had keys. I heard that they locked themselves and their goons underground, waiting for mourning. A wolf streamed into the city like an oil slick cuts through water,

a line of darkness that you know will remain long after it appears to dissipate. those who were living in less secure home meant a quick fate and I watched from above and cried I prayed for deliverance from my brutal reality the protection squad inspected us again the next day and again the day after that now they would stop people in the streets and order them to disrobe you can imagine the liberties they took

the bite victims who they hung seem to include a disproportionate amount of their detractors but I said nothing as in truth I was terrified I prayed every night for a sliver of hope it didn't come it was almost four weeks later when I rounded a corner and watched Anton beating a man What are you doing

The words had escaped my mouth before I realised I was speaking The scene in front of me was clear I saw the woman crying the man, her father Standing between her and Anton bleeding Anton paced over to me and placed a hand on my shoulder. This doesn't concern you. Carry on, friend. I looked at the pleading eyes of the man and looked at my feet. My words cut off as his fist hit my stomach. Didn't I tell you to carry on? He snarled as he circled me. I'm looking for an opening to exact more violence

as I tried to curl into a ball. He kicked my side and then my head. I had a scream as the man threw himself onto Anton's back. I heard shouts and footsteps. A crowd had surrounded Anton, holding him back from attacking the man. And then, laughter. Anton announced he was ready for his prize fight against the walls. The crowd dispersed quickly, leaving us alone. The man and his daughter shuffled past me. Thank you, he whispered as he went by. I clenched my eyes shut until I was sure I was alone. I wanted for the pain in my body to subside. Minutes passed. Finally, I opened my eyes. There on the ground in front of me laid a key. It was days before I slipped through the city to the site of the bunker where Anton and his men would take refuge. I tested the

heavy door of the bunker and found it locked. I looked around and, finding myself still alone, I pulled the key from my pocket and inserted it into the lock. It turns. Relocking the door, I hid the key away and hurried back to my apartment to think. We were all ordered to our homes at 3pm again the day of the full moon, and I thought out my strategy. The plan was flawed in a hundred ways, and I couldn't fathom how it ended, if not in my death.

I watched the streets empty, first of citizens, and finally of the protection. squad searching for stragglers. The sun grew lower in the sky as I changed into a pair of dark clothes and grabbed a hammer. At dusk I slipped through the door to my building and began my journey. I slink through the empty streets, hearing the distant howls begin. My plan was simple. Unlock the door, destroy the lock with the hammer, run back to my apartment before the wolves got me, while stranding the evil men in the bunker without a safe haven. It was a dumb, my dear. The light dropped out of the city quickly. Few streetlights still came on and all of the

buildings appeared lifeless, though I knew they were teeming with life, hidden behind boards and crouched under beds. I arrived at the bunker and smiled. I'd made it. I walked towards the door when a sound made me turn. A wolf stood behind me. The beast was giant. I've seen a mastiff once before, and this creature was at least twice its size. I clutched the hammer in my hand, trying to decide if I could fight it off. When I saw another behind it, and then another.

A tear ran down my cheek, and I dropped the hammer. I would not survive this night. There are bad men in there. again the words poured from my mouth before I realized I was speaking. The wolf stared at me. In the bunker, I came to unlock the door, I continued. You can eat me, just let me unlock the door. In that moment the wolf inclined its head ever so slightly.

I took a step backwards and then another. Moving slowly, I pulled the key from my pocket and inserted it into the lock. I turned it and opened the door, stepping to the side as I did so. I felt a breeze as the large animals flew through the door into the bunker and heard the confused screams from within. I waited until the wolves poured back out of the bunker, away from me and left the city. I walked back to my apartment unharmed and spent the night staring at the ceiling. In the morning I walked out of the city. I heard bits of confused conversation and knew I had hours before anyone tried to exert control.

I walked into the woods and kept walking, picking up bits of a trail here and there. I slept under the stars and walked further the next day, finally coming to a small camp that night. The people who greeted me were warm and friendly. They explained the changes they suffered through, how they were trying to control their hunger to harness it. They did not wish to harm the innocent, and in me they finally found an ally who might understand. I'm writing this from a small government office in the western barricade. There are four of us inside now, posing as soldiers. There have been enough reinforcements that no one knows who exactly is supposed to be here and who isn't.

The next full moon is in three days. When the three men with me turn, the guards will be distracted. I'll open the doors for the rest of the pack and will be through the barricade. The priest said the wolves were a punishment from God. No, I realize he's right. They're a way to punish the evil in the world, to wipe away the unjust. We're building something beautiful. After this full moon, we'll be free.

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beautiful balls with Manscape. Our second offering this evening is The Voice in the Night, a classic work by William Hope Hodgson. It was a dark, starless night. We were be calmed in the northern Pacific. Our exact position, I did not know, for the sun had been hidden

during the course of a weary, breathless week by a thin haze which had seemed to float above us, about the height of our mastheads, at whilst descending and shrouding the surrounding sea. With there being no wind, we'd steadied the tiller, and I was the only man on deck. The crew, consisting of two men and a boy, was sleeping forward in their den,

while Will, my friend, and the master of our little craft, was aft in his bunk on the port side of the little cabin. Suddenly, from out of the surrounding darkness, there came a hail. Schooner, ahoy! The cry was so unexpected that I gave no immediate answer because of my surprise. It came again, a voice curiously throaty and inhuman, calling from somewhere upon the dark sea away on our poor broadside. Schooner, ahoy! Hello!

I sung out, having gathered my wit somewhere. what? What are you? What do you want? Oh, you need not be afraid, answered the queer voice, having probably noticed some trace of confusion in my tone. I am only an old man. Ah, the poor sounded odd, but it was only afterward that it came back to me with any significance. Oh, why did you come alongside then? I queried somewhat snappishly, for I like not his hinting at my having been a trifle shaken. I can't. It wouldn't be safe. The voice broke off, and then there was silence.

What do you mean? I asked, growing more and more astonished. What's not safe? Where are you? I listened for a moment, but there came no answer. And then a sudden indefinite suspicion of I knew not what, coming to me. I stepped swiftly to the binnacle and took out the lighted lamp. at the same time I knocked on the deck with my heel to wake and will. Then I was back at the side, throwing the yellow funnel of light out into the silent immensity beyond our rail. As I did so, I heard a slight muffled cry, and then the sound of a splash as though someone had dipped oars abruptly.

Yet I cannot say with certainty that I saw anything, well, save it seemed to me that with the first flash of the light there had been something upon the waters, where now there was nothing. Hello there? I called. What foolery is this? But there came only the indistinct sounds of a boat being pulled away into the night. Then I heard Will's voice from the direction of the after scuttle. What's up, George? Come here, Will, I said.

What is it? he asked, coming across the deck. I told him the queer thing that had happened. well he put several questions and then after a moment's silence he raised his hands to his lips and hailed boat ahoy from a long distance away they came back to us a faint reply and my companion repeated his call presently after a short period of silence there grew on our hearing the muffled sound of oars at which will hailed again this time there was a reply put away the light "'Dammed, if I will,' I muttered. But Will told me to do as the voice bade, and I shoved it down under the bulwarks. "'Come nearer,' he said, and the awe's strokes continued. Then, when apparently some half-dozen fathoms distance, they again ceased.

"'Come alongside,' exclaimed Will. "'There's nothing to be frightened of aboard here.' "'Promise that you will not show the light.' "'What's to do with you?' I burst out, "'that you're so infernally afraid of the light.' "'Because?' began the voice, and stopped short. "'Because what?' I asked quickly. "'Will put his hand on my shoulder.

"'Shut up a minute, old man,' he said in a low voice. "'Let me tackle him.' He leaned more over the rail. "'See here, mister,' he said. "'This is a pretty queer business, and you coming a honest like this, right out in the middle of the Blessed Pacific. How are we to know what sort of a hanky-panky trick you're up to? You say there's only one of you. How are we to know, unless we get a squint of you, eh? What's your objection to the light, anyway? As he finished, I heard the noise of the

oars again, and then the voice came, but now from a greater distance, and sounding extremely hopeless and pathetic. I'm sorry, sorry, I would not have troubled you, only I'm hung angry, so is she. The voice died away, and the sound of the oars, dipping irregularly, was born to us. Stop! sang out, Will. I don't want to drive you away. Come back.

We'll keep the light hidden if you don't like it. You turn to me. It's a damn queer rig this, but I think there's nothing to be afraid of. There was a question in his tone, and I replied. No, I think the poor devil's been wrecked around here and gone crazy. The sound of the oars drew nearer. Shove that lamp back in the binnacle, said Will. Then he leaned over the rail and listened.

I replaced the lamp and came back to his side. The dipping of the oars ceased some dozen yards distant. Won't you come alongside now? Asked Will and an even voice. I've had the lamp put back in the binnacle. I cannot, replied the voice. I dare not come nearer. I dare not even pay you the, well, for the provisions.

That's all right, said Will and hesitated. You're welcome to as much grub as you can take. Again, he hesitated. Oh, you are very good, exclaimed the voice. May God who understands everything reward you. It broke off huskily. The... The lady, said Will abruptly.

Is she... Oh, I have left her behind upon the island, came the voice. What island? I cut in. Oh, I know not its name, returned the voice. I would, to God, it... It began and then checked itself just as suddenly. Could we not send a boat for her?

Ask Will at this point. "'No,' said the voice, with extraordinary emphasis. "'My God, no!' There was a moment's pause. Then it added in a tone which seemed a merited reproach. "'It was because of how want I ventured, "'because her agony tortured me. "'I am a forgetful brute,' exclaimed Will.

"'Just wait a minute, whoever you are, "'and I will bring you up something at once.' "'In a couple of minutes he was back again "'and his arms were full of various, edibles. He paused at the rail. Can't you come alongside for them? he asked. No, I dare not, replied the voice, and it seemed to me that in its tones I detected a note of stifled craving, as though the owner hushed a mortal desire.

Came to me then in a flash that the poor old creature out there in the darkness was suffering for actual need for that which Will held in his arms, and yet because of some unintelligible dread, refraining from dashing to the side of our schooner and receiving it. With the lightning-like conviction, there came the knowledge that the invisible was not mad, but samely facing some intolerable horror. Damn it, Will, I said, full of many feelings over which predominated of vast sympathy.

Get a box, that we must float off some stuff to him in it. This we did, propelling it away from the vessel, out into the darkness by means of a boat-hook. In a minute a slight cry from the invisible came to us, and we knew that he'd secured the box. A little later he called out a farewell to us, and so heartful a blessing that I'm sure we were the better for it. And then, without more ado, we heard the plight of oars across the darkness.

Pretty soon off, remarked Will, with perhaps just a little sense of injury, "'Wait,' I replied. "'I think somehow he'll come back. "'He must have been badly needing that food.' "'And the lady?' said Will. "'For a moment he was silent. "'And then he continued.

"'It's the queerest thing I have tumbled across "'since I've been fishing.' "'Yes,' I said, and fell to pondering. "'So the time slipped away. "'An hour, another, and still Will stayed with me. for the queer adventure had knocked all desire for sleep out of him. The third hour was three parts through when we heard again the sound of oars across the silent ocean. Listen, said Will, a low note of excitement in his voice.

He's coming, just as I thought, I muttered. The dipping of the oars drew nearer, and I noticed that the strokes were firmer and longer. The food had been needed. They came to a stop a little distance off the broadside, and the queer voice came again to us through the darkness. Schooner, ahoy. That you? Asked Will. Yes, replied the voice.

I left you suddenly, but there was a great need. The lady? Questioned Will. The lady is grateful now on earth. She'll be more grateful soon in heaven. Will began to make some reply in a puzzled voice, but became confused and broke off short. I said nothing. I was wondering at the curious pauses, and apart from my wonder, I was full of the great sympathy.

The voice continued, We, she and I have taught, as we shared the result of God's tenderness and yours, will interpose but without great coherence. I beg of you not to belittle your deed of Christian charity this night, said the voice. Be sure that it has not escaped his notice. It stopped and there was a full minute's silence. Then it came again. We have spoken together about this, which has befallen us.

We had thought to go out without telling anyone of the terror which has come into our lives. She's with me in believing that tonight's happenings are. a special ruling and that it's God's wish that we should tell you all that we have suffered since oh since yes said will softly oh since the sinking of the albatross oh i exclaimed involuntarily she left newcastle for frisco some six months ago and hasn't been heard of since yes said the voice but some few degrees to the north of a line. She was caught in a terrible storm and dismasted. When the day came, it was found. She was leaking badly, and presently, it fall into a calm. The sailors took to the boats, leaving a young lady, my fiancé, and myself upon the wreck. We were below,

gathering together a few of our belongings when they left. They were entirely callous, through fear, and when we came upon the decks, we saw them only as small shapes are far off upon the horizon. Yet we did not despair, but set to work and constructed a small raft. Upon this we put such few matters as it would hold, including a quantity of water in some ship's biscuits. Then the vessel, being very deep in the water, we got ourselves onto the raft and pushed off. It was later when I observed that we seemed to be in the way of some. some tide or current which bore us from the ship at an angle, so that in the course of three hours, by my watch, her hull became invisible to our sight, her broken mass remaining in view for a

somewhat longer period. Then towards evening it grew misty, and so through the night. The next day we were still encompassed by the mist, the weather remaining quiet. For four days we drifted through this strange haze until on the evening of the fourth day there grew upon our ears the murmur of breakers at a distance. Well, gradually it became plainer and somewhat after midnight it appeared to sound upon either hand at no very great space. The raft was raised upon a swell several times. Then we were in smooth water and the noise of the breakers was behind. When the morning came we found that we were in a sort of great lagoon, but of this we noticed little at the time, for close before us, through the enshrouding mist, loomed the hull of a large sailing

vessel. With one accord, we fell upon our knees, and thank God, for we thought that here was an end to our perils. Much we had to learn. The raft drew near to the ship, and we shouted on them to take us aboard, none answered. Presently the raft touched against the side of the vessel, and, seeing a rope hanging downward, I seized it and began to climb. yet I'd much ado to make my way up, because of a kind of grey, likeness fungus that seized upon the rope, which blotched the side of the ship lividly. I reached the rail and clambered over it onto the deck. Here I saw that the decks were covered in great patches with grey masses, some of them rising into notchal several feet in height. But at the time I thought less of this matter than of the possibility of there being people aboard the ship.

I shouted but none answered Then I went to the door below the poop deck I opened it and peered in There was a great smell of staleness So I knew in one moment that nothing living was within And with that knowledge I shut the door quickly For I felt Suddenly lonely

I went back to the side where it scrowl up My sweetheart was still sitting quietly upon the raft Well seeing me look down she caught up to know whether there were any aboard of the ship. I replied that the vessel had the appearance of having been long since deserted, but that if she would wait a little, I'd see whether there was anything in the shape of a ladder by which she could ascend to the deck. Then we'd make a search through the vessel together.

A little later, on the opposite side of the decks, I found a rope side ladder. Well, at this I carried across, and a minute afterwards she was beside me. together we explored the cabins and apartments in the after part of the ship but nowhere was there any sign of life here and there within the cabins themselves we came across odd patches of that queer fungus but this as my sweet art said could be cleansed away in the evening having assured ourselves that the after portion of the vessel was empty we picked our ways to the bows between the ugly gray nodules of that strange growth and here we made a further search, which told us that there was indeed none aboard but ourselves. This being now beyond any doubt, we returned to the stern of the ship and proceeded to make ourselves as comfortable as possible. Together we cleared out and cleaned two of the cabins, and after that I made examination whether it was anything hateable in the ship. This I soon found was so. I thank God in my heart for his goodness. In addition to this, I discovered the whereabouts of the

fresh water pump, and having fixed it, I found the water drinkable, though somewhat unpleasant to the taste. For several days we stayed aboard the ship, without attempting to get to the shore. We were busily engaged in making the place habitable. Yet even thus early, we became aware that our lot was even less to be desired than might have been imagined, for though, as a first step, we scraped away the odd patches of growth that studded the floors and walls of the cabins and saloon. They returned almost to their original size within the space of 24 hours, which not only discouraged us, but gave us a feeling of vague unease. Still, we would not admit ourselves beaten,

as we set to work afresh and not only scraped away the fungus, but soaked the places where it had been with carbolic, a canful of which I'd found in the pantry. Yet, by the end of the week the growth had returned in full strength, and in addition, it had spread to other places, as though our touching it and allowed germs from it to travel elsewhere. Ah, on the seventh of the morning, my sweetheart woke to find a small patch of it growing on her pillow, close to her face.

At that, she came to me, as soon as she could get her garments upon her. I was in the galley at the time, lighting the fire for breakfast. Come here, John, she said, and led me aft. When I saw the thing upon her pillow, I shuddered, and then and there we agreed to go right off the ship and see if we could not fare to make ourselves more comfortable ashore. Well, hurriedly we gathered together our few belongings, and even among those I found the funkers had been at work,

for one of her shores at a little lump of it growing near one edge. I threw the whole thing over the side without saying anything to her. The raft was still alongside, but it was too clumsy to guide and lowered down a small boat that hung across the stern, and in this we made our way to the shore. And yet, as we drew near to it, I became gradually aware that here the vile fungus which had driven us from the ship was growing riot. In places it rose into the horrible, fantastic mounds, which seemed almost a quiver, as with a quiet life when the wind blew across them. Here and there it took on the forms of vast fingers, and in others,

it just spread out flat and smooth and treacherous. Odd places, it appeared as grotesque, stunted trees, seeming extraordinarily kinked and gnarled, the whole quaking vilely at times. At first it seemed to us that there was no single portion of the serranish shore which was not hidden beneath the masses of the hideous lacon. Yet in this, I found we were mistaken. For somewhat later, coasting along the shore at a little distance,

we described a smooth white patch of what appeared to be fine sand, and there we landed. It wasn't sand. What it was, I do not know. All that I have observed is that upon it the fungus will not grow. While everywhere else, save where the sand like earth wanders only, pathwise amid the grey desolation of the lichen, there is nothing but loathsome greyness. It's difficult to make you understand how cheered we were.

to find one place that was absolutely free from the growth, and here we deposited our belongings. They went back to the ship for such things as it seemed to us we should need. Among other matters, I managed to bring ashore with me one of the ship's sails, which I constructed two small tents from, which, though exceedingly rough-shaped, serve the purposes for which they were intended. In these we lived and stored our various necessities, thus for a matter of some four weeks all went smoothly and without particular unhappiness indeed may i say with much happiness for we were together it was on the thumb of her right hand that the growth first showed it was only a small circular spot much like a little grey mole but my god how the fear leaped to my heart when she showed me the place we cleansed it between us washing it with carbolic and water

In the morning of the following day She showed her hand to me again The grey, warty thing had returned For a little while we looked at one another in silence Then, still wordless She started to remove it In the midst of the operation she spoke suddenly What's that on the side of your face dear?

Her voice was sharp with anxiety I put my hand up to feel There, under the end up to feel "'There, under the hair by your ear, a little bit to the front.' "'My finger rested upon the place, and then I knew. "'Let's get your thumb-thum first,' I said, "'and she submitted only because she was afraid to touch me until it was glanced. "'I finished washing and disinfecting her thumb,

"'and then she turned to my face. "'After it was finished we sat together and talked a while of many things, "'for they had come into our lives, sudden. and very terrible thoughts. We were all at once afraid of something worse than death. We spoke of loading the boat with provisions and water

and making our way out onto the sea. Yet we were helpless for many causes and the growth that attacked us already. We decided to stay. God would do with us what was his will. We would wait

a month. Two months, three months passed, and the places grew somewhat, and there had come others. Yet we fought so strenuously with the fear that its headway was but slow, comparatively speaking. Occasionally we ventured off to the ship for such stores as we needed. There we found that the fungus grew persistently. One of the nodules on the main deck soon became as high as my head. We'd now given up all thought or hope of leaving the island. We'd realise that it would be unallowable to go among healthy humans, with the things from which we were suffering anyway.

With this determination and knowledge in our minds, we knew that we should have to husband our food and water, for we did not know at that time, but that we should possibly live for many years. This reminds me that I've told you that I'm an old man. judged by years this is not so but but he broke off then continued somewhat abruptly as i was saying we knew that we should have to use care in the matter of food but we had no idea then how little food there was left of which to take care it was a week later that i made the discovery that all the other bread tanks, which I supposed full, were empty. And that, beyond odd tins of vegetables and meat and some other matters, we had nothing on which to depend, but the bread and the tank which I'd already opened. After learning this, I bestirred myself to do what I could, and set to work

at fishing in the lagoon, but with no success. At this I was somewhat inclined to feel desperate until the thought came to me to try outside the lagoon, in the open sea. Well, here at times I caught odd fish, but so infrequently that they proved to be a little help in keeping us from the hunger which are threatened. It seemed to me that our deaths were more likely to come by hunger and not by the growth of the thing that seized upon our bodies. We were in this state of mind when the fourth month wore out. Then I made a very horrible discovery. One morning, a little before midday, I came from the ship with a portion of the biscuits which were left.

And in the mouth of her tent, I saw my sweetheart sitting, eating something. What is it, my dear? I called out as I leapt ashore. Yet on hearing my voice, she seemed confused, and turning, slightly through something toward the edge of the little clearing. It fell short, and a vague suspicion, and having arisen within me, I walked across and picked it up. It was a piece of the grey fungus. As I went to her with it in my hand, she turned deadly pale.

Then at rose red. I felt strangely dazed and frightened. Oh, my dear, my dear, I said, I could say no more. Yet at my words she broke down and cried bitterly. Gradually, as she calmed, I got from her the new. that she tried it the day before and, well, and liked it. I got her promise on her knees not to touch it again, however great our hunger. After she promised, she told me that the desire for it had come suddenly,

and that until the moment of that desire, she'd experienced nothing toward it but most extreme repulsion. Later in the day, feeling strangely restless and much shaken with the thing which I'd discovered, I made my way along one of the twisted paths, formed by the white sand-like substance, which led among the fungoy growth. I had once before ventured along there, but not to any great distance. This time, being involved in perplexing thought,

I went much farther than hitherto. Suddenly I was called to myself by a queer horse sound on my left. Turning quickly, I saw that there was a movement among the extraordinary shaped mass of fungus, close to my elbow. It was swaying uneasily as though it possessed a life of its own. abruptly as I stared The thought came to me

That the thing had a grotesque resemblance To the figure of a distorted human creature Even as the fancy flashed into my brain There was a slight, sickening noise of tearing And I saw that one of the branch like arms Was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses And coming toward me The head of the thing

A shapeless grey ball Inclined in my direction I stood stupidly and the vile arm brushed against my face. I gave out a frightened cry and ran back a few paces. There was a sweetish taste upon my mouth where the thing had touched me. I licked them and was immediately filled with an inhuman desire. I turned and seized a mass of the fungus,

and then more and more. I was insatiable. In the midst of devouring the remembrance of the morning's discovery swept into my mazed brain. it was sent by God when I dashed the fragment I held to the ground Then utterly wretched and feeling a dreadful guiltiness I made my way back to the little encampment I think she knew

By some marvellous intuition which love must have given So soon as she set her eyes on me Her quiet sympathy made it easier for me And I told her of my sudden weakness yet omitted to mention the extraordinary thing which had gone before. I desired to spare her all unnecessary terror. But for myself, I added an intolerable knowledge to breed an incessant terror in my brain,

for I doubted not, but I had seen the end of one of those men who had come to the island in the ship in the lagoon. And in that monstrous ending, I'd seen our own. Thereafter we kept from the abominable food, though the desire for it had entered into our blood. Yet our drear punishment was on us. For day by day, with monstrous rapidity, the fungoy growth took hold of our poor bodies.

Nothing we could do would check it immaterially, and so, oh God, and so we who'd been human became, well, it matters less each day. only only we had been man and made and day by day the fight is more dreadful to withstand the hunger lust for the terrible lichen a week ago we ate the last of the biscuit and since that time i've caught three fish i was out air-fishing tonight when your schooner drifted upon me out of the mist god i hailed you and you know the rest and may god out of his great heart bless you for your goodness to a couple of poor outcast souls there was a dip of an awe and another then the voice came again and for the last time sounding through the slight surrounding mist ghostly and mournful god bless you good-bye we shouted together hoarsely our hearts full of many emotions

I glanced about me. I became aware that the dawn was now upon us. The sun flung a stray beam across the hidden sea, pierced the mist dully, and lit up the receding boat with a gloomy fire. Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge, a great grey nodding sponge. The oars continued to ply.

They were grey, as was the boat. And my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar. My gaze flashed back to the head. It nodded forward as the oars went backward for the stroke. Then the oars were dipped. The boat shot out the patch of light. And the thing went nodding into the mist. Now, one thing a lot of you say to me when you get in touch is that

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world's immersive.com and don't forget to enter the code creep at checkout for your discounts. Tonight's third tale of terror is the devil and Tom Walker, a classic by Washington Irving. A few miles from Boston in Massachusetts, there is a deep inlet winding several miles into the interior of the country from Charles Bay and terminating a thickly wooded swamp or morass. On one side of this inlet is a beautiful dark grove. On the opposite side the land rises abruptly from the water's edge, into a high ridge on which grow a few scattered oaks of great age and immense size. Under one of these gigantic trees, according to old stories, there was a great amount of treasure buried by Kid the Pirate. The inlet allowed a facility to bring the money in a boat secretly and at night to the very foot of the hill.

The elevation of the place permitted a good lookout to be kept, that no one was at hand while the remarkable trees form good landmarks by which the place might easily be found again. The old stories add, moreover, that the devil presided at the hiding of the money and took it under his guardianship. But this, it is well known, he always does with buried treasure, particularly when it has been ill-gotten. Be that as it may, Kit never returned to recover his wealth, being shortly after seized at Boston,

sent out to England, and there hanged for a pirate. About the year 1727, just at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England, and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees. They lived near this place, a meagre miserly fellow of the name of Tom, walker. He had a wife as miserly as himself. They were so miserly that they even conspired to cheat

each other. Whatever the woman could lay her hands on, she hid away. A hen could not cackle before she was on the alert to secure the new laid egg. Her husband was continually prying about to detect her secret hordes, and many and fierce were the conflicts that took place about what ought to have been common property. They lived in a forlorn-looking house that stood alone and had an air of starvation. A few straggling savantries, emblems of sterility grew near it. No smoke ever curled from its chimney, no traveller stopped at its door. A miserable horse whose ribs were as articulate as the bars of a gridiron stalked about a

field where a thin carpet of moss, scarcely covering the ragged, beds of pudding stone, tantalized and balked its hunger. And sometimes he would lean his face over the fence, look piteously at the passerby, and seemed to petition deliverance from this land of famine. The house and its inmates had altogether a bad name. Tom's wife was a tall termagant, fierce of temper, loud of tongue and strong of arm. Her voice was often heard in wordy warfare with her husband, and his face sometimes showed signs that their conflicts were not confined to words.

No one ventured, however, to interfere between them. The lonely wayfarer shrunk within himself at the horrid clamor and clapper clawing. I'd the den of discord a scourgues and hurried on his way, rejoicing if a bachelor in his celibacy. One day that Tom Walker had been to a distant part of the neighbourhood, he took what he considered a short-cut homewards through the swamp. Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route. The swamp was thickly grown with great gloomy pines and hemlocks, some of them 90 feet high, which made it dark at noon day

and a retreat for all the hours of the neighbourhood. It was full of pits and quagmires, partly covered with weeds and mosses, where the green surface often betrayed the traveller into a gulf of black smother, mud. There were also dark and stagnant pools, the abodes of the tadpole, the bullfrog, and the water snake, and where trunks of pines and hemlocks lay half drowned. Half rotting, looking like alligators, sleeping in the mire. Tom had been picking his way cautiously through the treacherous forest, stepping from tuft to tuft of rushes and roots,

which afforded precarious footholes among deep sloughs, or pacing carefully, like a pet along the prostrate trunks of trees, startled now and then by the sudden screaming of the bittern, or the quacking of a wild duck, rising on the wing from some solitary pool. At length he arrived at a piece of firm ground which ran out like a peninsula into the deep bosom of the swamp. It had been one of the strongholds of the Indians during their wars with the first colonists. Here they'd thrown up a kind of fort which they had looked at. looked upon as almost impregnable, and had used as a place of refuge for their squaws and children. Nothing remained of the Indian fort but a few embankments gradually sinking to the level of the

surrounding earth, and already overgrown in part by oaks and other forest trees, the foliage of which formed a contrast to the dark pines and hemlocks of the swamp. It was late in the dusk of evening that Tom Walker reached the old fort, and he paused there for a while to rest himself. anyone but he would have felt unwilling to linger in this lonely melancholic place for the common people had a bad opinion of it from the stories handed down from the time of the indian wars when it was asserted that the savages held incantations here and made sacrifices to the evil spirit Tom Walker, however, was not a man to be troubled with any fears of that kind. He reposed himself for some time on the trunk of a fallen hemlock, listening to the boding cry of the tree-toed, and delving with his walking staff into a mound of black mould at his feet.

As he turned up the soil unconsciously, his staff struck against something hard. He raked it out of the vegetable mould and, lo, a cloven skull with a noughtisholving skull with an Indian tomahawk buried deep in it lay before him. The rust on the weapon showed the time that had elapsed since this death blow had been given. It was a dreary memento of the fierce struggle that had taken place in this last foothold of the Indian warriors. Hmpf, said Tom Walker, as he gave the skull a kick to shake the dirt from it. Let that skull alone, said a gruff voice. Tom lifted up his eyes and beheld a great black man, seated directly opposite him on the stump of a tree.

He was exceedingly surprised, having neither seen nor heard anyone approach, and he was still more perplexed and observing as well as the gathering gloom would permit that the stranger was neither Negro nor Indian. It is true he was dressed in a rude half-Indian garb and had a red belt or sash swathed around his body, but his face was neither black nor copper colour, but rather swarthy and dingy and begrimed with soot as if he'd been accustomed to toil among fires and forges. He had a shock of coarse black hair that stood out from his head in all directions

and bore an axe on his shoulder. He scowled for a moment at Tom with a pair of great red eyes. What are you doing on my grounds? said the black man with a hoarse, growling voice. Your grounds, said Tom with a sneer. No more your grounds than mine. They belong to Deacon Peabody. Deacon Peabody, be dead, said the stranger.

As I flatter myself, he will be, if he does not look more to his own sins unless to his neighbors. Look yonder and see how Deacon Peabody is fairing. Tom looked in the direction that the stranger pointed, and beheld one of the great trees, fair and flourishing without, but rotten at the core, and saw that it had been nearly hewned through, so that the first high wind was likely to blow it down. On the bark of the tree was scored the name of Deacon Peabody. He now looked round and found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great men of the colony, and all more or less scored by the axe.

The one on which he'd been seated, and which had evidently just been hewn down, bore the name of crowning shield. And he recollected a mighty rich man of that name who made a vulgar display of wealth, which he was whispered he'd acquired by buccaneering. He's just ready for burning, said the black man with a growl of triumph. You see, I'm likely to have a good stock of firewood for winter. But what right? of you, said Tom, to cut down Deacon Peabody's timber. The right of prior claim, said the other.

This woodland belonged to me long before one of your white-faced race put foot upon this soil. And pray, who are you, if I may be so bold, said Tom. Oh, I go by various names. I'm the wild huntsman in some countries, the black miner in others. In this neighborhood I am known by the name of the Black Woodsman. I am he to whom the Red Men devoted this pardon, and now and then roasted a white man by way of sweet smell and sacrifice. Since the Red Men have been exterminated by you white savages, I amuse myself by presiding at the persecutions of Quakers and Anabaptists. I am the great patron, a prompter of slave dealers, and the Grand Master of the Salem, witches. The upshot of all witches that, if I mistake not, said Tom sturdily,

you are he commonly called Old Scratch. The same at your service, replied the black man, with a half-civil knot. Such was the opening of this interview, according to the old story, though it has almost too familiar an air to be credited. One would think that, to me, with such a singular personage in this wild lonely place would have shaken any man's nerves. But Tom was a hard-minded fellow, not easily daunted, and he lived so long with a termagant wife that he did not even fear the devil. It is said that after this commencement, they had a long and earnest conversation together as Tom returned homewards. The black man told him of great sums of money which had been buried by Kid the Pirate. Under the oak trees on the high

ridge not far from the morass. All these were under his command and protected by his power, so that none could find them, but such as propitiated his favour. These he offered to place within Tom Walker's reach, having conceived in his special kindness for him, but they were only to be had on certain conditions. What these conditions were may easily be surmised, though Tom never disclosed them publicly. They must have been very hard. he required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view. When they'd reached the edge of the swamp, the stranger paused. What proof have I that all you've been telling me is true? asked Tom.

There is my signature, said the black man, pressing his finger on Tom's forehead. So saying, he turned off among the thickets of the swamp, and seemed, as Tom said, to go down, down, down, into the earth, until nothing but his head and shoulders could be seen. And so on, until he totally disappeared. When Tom reached home, he found the black print of a finger burnt, as it were, into his forehead, which nothing could obliterate. The first news his wife had to tell him was the sudden death

of Absalom Crowning Shield, the rich buccaneer. It was announced in the papers with the usual flourish, a great man had fallen in Israel. Tom recollected the tree which his black friend had just tuned down, and which was ready for burning. Let the free Buddha roast, said Tom. Who cares? He now felt convinced that all he had heard and seen was no illusion.

He was not prone to let his wife into his confidence, but as this was an uneasy secret, he willingly shared it with her. all her avarice was awakened at the mention of hidden gold and she urged her husband to comply with the black man's terms and secure what would make them wealthy for life however tom might have felt disposed to sell himself to the devil he was determined not to do so to oblige his wife so he flatly refused out of the mere spirit of contradiction

many and bitter were the quarrels they had on the subject but the more she talked, the more resolute was Tom not to be damned to please her. At length, she determined to drive the bargain on her own account, and if she succeeded to keep all the gain to herself. Being of the same fearless temper as her husband, she set off the old Indian fort towards the close of a summer's day. She was many hours absent, but when she came back, she was reserved and sullen in her reply.

She spoke something of a black man whom she'd met about twilight, hewing at the root of a tall tree. He was sulky, however, and would not come to terms. She was to go again with a propitiatory offering, but what it was, she forbore to say. The next evening, she set off again for the swamp, with her apron heavily laden. Tom waited and waited for her, but in vain. Midnight came, but she did not make her appearance. Morning, noon, night returned, but she still did not come. Tom now grew uneasy for her safety, especially as he found she carried off in her apron and silver teapot and spoons and every portable article of value. Another night elapsed, another morning came, but no wife. In a word, she was never heard of,

of more. What was her real fate? Nobody knows, in consequence of so many pretending to know. It's one of those facts that have become confounded by a variety of historians. Some asserted that she lost her way among the tangled mazes of the swamp and sunk into some pit or sloth. Others, more uncharitable, hinted that she had eloped with a household booty and made off to some other province, while others assert that the tempter had decoyed her into a dismal quagmire on top of which her hat was found lying. In confirmation of this, it was said a great black man with an axe on his shoulder was seen late that very evening coming out of the swamp, carrying a bundle tied in a check apron with an air of surly triumph. The most current and improbable story, however,

observed that Tom Walker grew so anxious about the fate of his wife and his property that he set out at length to seek them both at the Indian fort. During a long summer's afternoon he searched about the gloomy place but no wife was to be seen. He called her name repeatedly but she was nowhere to be heard. The Bittern alone responded to his voice as he flew screaming by or the bullfrog croaked dolefully from a neighbouring pool. At length it is said, just in the brown hour of twilight, when the owls began to hoot and the bats to flit about, his attention was attracted by the clamour of carrion crows

that were hovering about a cypress tree. He looked and beheld a bundle tied in a check apron and hanging in the branches of the tree. With a great vulture perched hard by, as if keeping watch upon it. Well, he leaped with joy, for he recognised his wife's apron and supposed it to contain the household valuables.

Let us get hold of the property, said he, consolingly to himself, and we will endeavour to do without the woman. As he scrambled up the tree, the vulture spread its wide wings and sailed off, screaming into the deep shadows of the forest. Tom seized the check-a-priced,

and butt, woeful sight, found nothing but a heart and liver tied up in it. Such, according to the most authentic old story, was all that was to be found of Tom's wife. She'd probably attempted to deal with a black man as she'd been accustomed to dealing with her husband, but though a female scold is generally considered a match for the devil, yet in this instance she appears to have had the worst of it. She must have died game, however, for it is said Tom noticed many prints of cloven feet deeply stamped about the tree and several handfuls of hair that looked as if it had been plucked from the coarse black shock of the woodsman. Tom knew his wise prowess by experience. He shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the size of a fierce clapper clawing. He, he said to himself,

old scratch must have had a tough time of it. Tom consoled himself for the loss of his property with the loss of his wife, for he was a man of fortitude. He even felt something like gratitude towards the black woodsman who he considered had done him a kindness. He sought, therefore, to cultivate a further acquaintance with him, but for some time without success. The old black legs played shy for whatever people may think he's not all.

always to be had for calling for. He knows how to play his cards when pretty sure of his game. At length, it is said, when Delay had whetted Tom's eagerness to the quick and prepared him to agree to anything rather than not gain the promised treasure, he met the black man one evening in his usual woodman dress, with his axe on his shoulder, sauntering along the edge of the swamp and humming a tune. he affected to receive Tom's advance with great indifference, made brief replies and went on humming his tune. By degrees, however, Tom brought him to business, and they began to haggle about the terms on which the former was to have the pirate's treasure.

There was one condition which need not be mentioned, being generally understood in all cases where the devil grants favours, but there were others about which, though of less importance, he was in for flexibly obstinate. He insisted that the money found through his means should be employed in his service. He proposed, therefore, that Tom should employ it in the black traffic, that is to say that he would fit out a slave ship. This, however, Tom resolutely refused. He was bad enough in all conscience, but the devil himself could not tempt him to turn slave dealer. Finding Tom so squeamish on this point. He did not insist upon it, but proposed instead that he should turn Huzura, the devil being extremely anxious for the increase of Azurus, looking upon them as his peculiar people. To this, no objections were made, for it was just a Tom's taste.

You shall open a broker's shop in Boston next month, said the black man. I'll do it tomorrow, if you wish, said Tom Walker. you shall lend money at two percent a month he can get i'll charge four replied tom walker you shall extort bonds foreclosed mortgages drive the merchant to bankruptcy i'll drive him to the cried tom walker eagerly you are the azure for my money

said the blacklegs with delight so when will he you want the rile this very night done said the devil done said tom walker so they shook hands and struck a bargain a few days time saw tom walker seated behind his desk in a counting house in boston his reputation for a ready-money man who will lend money out for a good consideration soon spread abroad Everybody remembers the days of Governor Belcher when money was particularly scarce. It was a time of paper credit. The country had been deluge with government bills.

The famous land bank had been established. There had been a rage for speculating. The people had run mad with schemes for new settlements, for building cities in the wilderness. Land jobbers went about with maps of grants and townships and El Doradoes, lying nobody knew where but which everybody was ready to purchase. In a word, the great speculating fever, which breaks out every now and then in the country,

had raged to an alarming degree, and everybody was dreaming of making sudden fortunes from nothing. As usual, the fever had subsided. The dream had gone off and the imaginary fortunes with it. The patients were left in doleful plight, and the whole country resounded with the consequent cry. of hard times. At this propitious time of public distress, did Tom Walker set up as an azura in Boston.

His door was soon thronged by customers, the needy and the adventurous, the gambling speculator, the dreaming land-jobber, the thriftless tradesman, the merchant with crack credit. In short, everyone driven to raise money by desperate means and desperate sacrifices, hurried to Tom Walker. Thus, Tom was the universal friend of the needy,

and he acted like a friend in need. That is to say, he always exacted good pay and good security. In proportion to the distress of the applicant was the hardness of his terms. He accumulated bonds and mortgages, gradually squeezed his customers closer and closer, and sent them at length dry as a sponge, from his door. In this way he made money hand over hand,

became a rich and mighty man, and exalted his cocked hat upon change. He built himself, as usual, a vast house, out of ostentation, but left the greater part of it unfinished and unfurnished out of parsimony. He even set up a carriage in the fullness of his vain glory, though we nearly starve the horses which drew it,

and as the ungreased wheels groaned and screeched on the axle trees, you would have thought you heard the souls of the poor debtors he was squeezing. As Tom waxed old, however, he grew thoughtful. Having secured the good things of this world, he began to feel anxious about those of the next. He thought, with regret, on the bargain he'd made with his black friend and set his wits to work to cheat him out of the conditions. He became, therefore, all of a sudden, a violent churchgoer.

He prayed loudly and strenuously as if heaven were to be taken by force of lungs. Indeed, one might always tell when he'd sinned most during the week by the clamour of his Sunday devotion. The quiet Christians, who had been modestly and steadfastly travelling Zionward, was struck with self-reproach at seeing themselves so suddenly outstripped in their career, by this new-made convert. Tom was as rigid in religious as in money matters. He was a stern supervisor and censor of his neighbours

and seemed to think every sin entered up to their account became a credit on his own side of the page. He even talked of the expediency of reviving the persecution of Quakers and Anabaptists. In a word, Tom Zeal became as notorious as his riches. Still, in spite of all his strenuous attention to forms, Tom had a lurking dread that the devil, after all, would have his due. But he might not be taken unawares, therefore, it is said he always carried a small Bible in his coat pocket. He had also a great folio Bible on his counting house desk that would frequently be found reading it when people call on business.

On such occasions he would lay his green spectacles on the book to mark the place while he turned round to drive some usurious bargain. Some say that Tom grew a little crack-brained in his old days, and that fancying his end approaching, he had his horse, new shod, saddled and bridled, and buried with his feet uppermost, because he supposed that at the last day the world would be turned upside down, in which case he should find his horse, standing ready for mounting, and he was determined at the worst to give his old friend a run for it. This, however, is probably a mere old wives' fable. If he really did take such a precaution, he was totally superfluous. At least so says the authentic old legend, which closes his story in the following manner. On one hot afternoon in the dog days, just as a terrible black thunder gust was coming up, Tom Sadden is counting how much. in his white linen cap and India's silk morning gown.

He was on the point of foreclosing a mortgage, by which he would complete the ruin of an unlucky land speculator for whom he had professed the greatest friendship. The poor Land Jobber begged him to grant a few months' indulgence. Tom had grown testy and irritated and refused another day. My family will be ruined and brought upon the parish, said the Land Jobber. "'A charity begins at home,' replied Tom.

"'I must take care of myself in these hard times.' "'You've made so much money out of me,' said the speculator. Tom lost his patience and his piety. "'Let the devil take me,' said he, "'if I have made a farthing.' Just then there were three loud knocks at the street door. He stepped out to see who was there. A black man was holding a black horse

Which neighed and stamped with impatience Tom You're a calm for Said the black fellow gruffly Tom shrunk back But too late He had left his little Bible At the bottom of his coat pocket

And his big Bible on the desk Buried under the mortgage he was about to foreclose Never was a sinner taken more unawares The black man whist him like a child to strike the horse, and away he galloped in the midst of a thunderstorm. The clerks stuck their pens behind their ears and stared after him from the windows. Away went Tom Walker, dashing down the streets, his white cap bobbing up and down, his morning gown fluttering in the wind, and his steed striking fire out of the pavement at every bound. When the clerk's turn to look for the black man,

He had disappeared. Tom Walker never returned to foreclose the mortgage. A countryman who lived on the borders of the swamp reported that, in the height of the thunder gust, he'd heard a great clattering of hooves and a howling along the road, and that when he ran to the window he just caught sight of a figure, such as I have described, on a horse that galloped like mad across the fields, over the hills and down into the black hemlock swamp. towards the old Indian fort, and that shortly after a thunderbolt fell in that direction, which seemed to have set the whole forest in a blaze.

The good people of Boston shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, but had been so much accustomed to witches and goblins and tricks of the devil in all kinds of shapes from the first settlement of the colony that they were not so much horror-struck as might have been expected. Trustees were appointed to take charge of Tom's effects. There was nothing, however, to administer upon. On searching his coffers, all his bonds and mortgages were found reduced to cinders. In place of golden silver, his iron chest was filled with chips and shavings.

Two skeletons lay in his stable instead of his half-starved horses, and the very next day his great house took fire and was burnt to the ground. Such was the end of Tom Walker and his ill-god and well. that all griping money brokers lay this story to heart the truth of it is not to be doubted the very hole under the oak trees from whence he dug kid's money is to be seen to this day and the neighbouring swamp and old indian ford is often haunted in story nights by a figure on horseback in a morning gown and white cap which is doubtless the troubled spirit of the azura in fact the story has resolved itself into a proverb and is the origin of that popular saying prevalent throughout New England of the devil and Tom Walker

Well it's beer o'clock ladies and gentlemen The doctor's favourite time of the day And right now I'm imagining myself Figuratively being transported To a cosy little Belgian beer cafe Courtesy of Beer 52 So how does a free case of eight Belgian beers sound to you. Craft beers, that is. Celebrate the country's ancient and world-famous beer

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And if it's not for you, you can pause or cancel at any time. Just go to Beer52.com slash creep to claim your free case of eight craft beers. One more time, that's Beer52.com slash creep. We round off proceedings this evening with the old school classic, The Isle of the Torturers by Clark Ashton Smith. Between the sun's departure and return, the silver death had fallen upon, on Yoros. Its advent, however, have been told in many prophecies, both immemorial and recent. Astrologers had said that this mysterious malady, heretofore unknown on earth, would descend

from the great star, Akhenar, which presided balefully over all the lands of the southern continent of Zothiq, and having sealed the flesh of a myriad men with its bright, metallic pallor, the plague would still go onward in time and space, born by the dim currents of ether to other worlds. Dyer was the silver death, and no one knew the secret of its contagion or the cure. Swift is the desert wind. It came into Yoros from the devastated realm of Tarsoon,

overtaking the very messengers who ran by night to give warning of its nearness. Those who were smitten felt an icy, freezing cold, an instant rigor as if the outermost gulf had breathed upon them. Their faces and bodies whitened strangely, gleaming with a wan luster, and became stiff as long-dead corpses, all in the interim of minutes. In the streets of Silpon and Siloah, and in Farad, the capital of Yoros, the plague passed like an eerie, glittering light from countenance to countenance under the golden lamps, and the victims fell where they were stricken, and the deathly brightness remained upon them. The loud, tumultuous public carnivores were stifled by its passing, and the merry-makers were frozen in frolic attitudes. In proud mansions, the wine-flushed revellers grew pale amid their garish feasts, and reclined in their opulent chairs, still holding the half-empty cups with rigid fingers.

Merchants lay in their counting-houses on the heaped coins they'd begun to reckon, and thieves, entering later, were unable to depart with their booty. Diggers died in the half-completed graves they dug for others, but no one came to dispute their possession. There was no time to flee from the strange, inevitable scourge. Dreadfully and quickly, beneath the clear stars, it breathed upon Yoris, and few were they who awakened from slumber at dawn. Fulbara, the young king of Yoros, who had but newly succeeded to the throne, was virtually a ruler without a people. Fulberra had spent the night of the plague's advent on a high tower of his palace above Farad, an observatory tower equipped with astronomical appliances. A great heaviness had lain on his heart, and his thoughts were dulled with an opiate despair,

but sleep was remote from his eyelids. He knew the many predictions that foretold the silver death, and moreover he'd read its imminent coming in the stars, with the aid of the old astrologer and sorcery. Vemdes. His latter knowledge he and Vemdes had not cared to promulgate, knowing full well that the doom of Yoros was a thing decreed from all time by infinite destiny and that no man could evade the doom unless it were written that he should die in another

way than this. Now Vemdes had cast the horoscope of Fulberra, and though he found therein certain ambiguities that his science could not resolve, it was nevertheless written plainly. that the king would not die in Yoros. Where he would die, and in what manner were alike doubtful. But Vemdes, who had served Altaf, the father of Fulbara, and was no less devoted to the new ruler, had wrought by means of his magical art, an enchanted ring that would protect Fulbara from the silver death in all times and places. The ring was made of a strange red metal, darker than ruddy gold or copper,

and was set with a black and oblong gem, not so. known to terrestrial lepidaries, that gave forth eternally strong aromatic perfume. The sorcerer told Fulbray never to remove the ring from the middle finger on which he wore it, not even in lands afar from Yoros, and in days after the passing of the silver death. For if once the plague had breathed upon Fulbara, he would bear its subtle contagion always in his flesh, and the contagion would assume its wanted virulence with the ring's removal. But Vemdes did not tell the origin of the red metal and the dark gem, nor the price at which the protective magic had been purchased.

With a sad heart, Fulborough had accepted the ring and had worn it, and so it was that the silver death blew over him in the night and harmed him not. But waiting anxiously on the high tower, and watching the golden lights of Farad rather than the white implacable stars, he felt a light passing chillness that belonged not to the summer air. And even as it passed the gay noises of the city ceased, and the moaning lutes faltered strangely and expired. The stillness crept on the carnival, and some of the lamps went out and were not re-lit. In the palace beneath him there was also silence, and he heard no more the laughter of his courtiers and chamberlains, and Femdes came not, as was his custom,

to join Fulberra on the tower at midnight. So Fulbara knew himself for a realmless king, and the grief that he still felt for the noble altar was swollen by a great sorrow for his perished people. Hour by hour he sat motionless, too sorrowful for tears. The stars changed above him, and Akhna glared down perpetually like the bright,

cruel eye of a mocking demon, and the heavy balsam of the black jured ring arose, to his nostrils and seemed to stifle him. And once the thought occurred to Fulbara, to cast the ring away and die as his people had died, but his despair was too heavy upon him for even this. And so, at length, the dawn came slowly in heavens as pale as the silver death

and found him still on the tower. In the dawn King Fulber arose and descended the coiled stairs of the Poffery into his palace, and midway on the stairs, who saw the fallen corpse of the old sorcerer of Vemdes, who had died even as he climbed to join his master. The wrinkled face of Vemdes was like polished metal

and was whiter than his beard and hair. His open eyes, which had been dark as sapphires, were frosted with the plague. Then, grieving greatly for the death of Vemdes, whom he had loved, as a foster father, the king went slowly on. And in the sweets and horns below, he found the bodies of his courtiers and servants and guardsmen, and none remained alive, excepting three slaves who warded the green, brazen portals of the lower vaults,

far beneath the palace. Now Fulberra bethought him of the council of Vemdes, who had urged him to flee from Yoros and to seek shelter in the southern Isle of Sintram, which paid tribute to the kings of Yoros, and though we'd no heart for this, nor for any court, course of action, Fulber obeyed the three remaining slave to gather food and such other supplies as were necessary for a voyage of some length, and to carry them aboard a royal barge of ebony that was moored at the palace porticoes on the river Vom. Then, embarking with the slaves, he took the helm of the barge and directed the slaves to unfur the broad amber sail,

and passed the stately city of Farah, whose streets were thronged with the silvery dead. They sailed on the widening Jasper estuary of the Valma and into the Amaranth-colored Gulf of the Induskian Sea. A favourable wind was behind them, blowing from the north over the desolate Tassoon and Yoros, even as the silver death had blown in the night. And idly beside them, on the voom, there floated seaward many vessels whose crews and captains had all died of the plague. And Farad was still as a necropolis of old time. and nothing stirred on the estuary shores, excepting the plummy, fan-shape and palms that swayed southward in the freshening wind. And soon the green strand of Yoros receded, gathering to itself the blueness and the dreams of distance.

Creaming with a whiny foam, full of strange murmurous voices and vague tales of exotic things, the halcyon sea was about the voyages now, beneath the high-lifting summer sun. but the sea's enchanted voices in its long, languorous, immeasurable crailing could not soothe the sorrow of Fulbara and in his heart a despair abided, black as the gem that was set in the ring of Vamdees. Albeit he held the great helm of the Ebon barge and steered as straightly as he could by the sun towards Cintram. The amber sail was taught with the favouring wind and the barge sped onward all that day, Cleaving the Amaranth waters with its dark prow, that reared in the carved form of an ebony goddess.

And when the night came, with the familiar austral stars, Fulborough was able to correct such errors as he'd made in reckoning the course. For many days they flew southward, and the sun lowered a little in its circling behind them, and new stars climbed and clustered at evening about the black goddess of the prow. and Fulberra, who had once sailed to the Isle of Syntrum in his boyhood days with his father Alta, thought to see here along the lifting of its shores of camphor and sandalwood from the whiny deep. But in his heart there was no gladness,

and often now he was blinded by wild tears, remembering that other voyage with Alta. Then, suddenly, and at high noon, there fell an airless cabin, and the waters became as purple glass about the barge. The sky changed to a dome of beamed copper, arcing close and low, and as if by some evil wizardry, the dome darkened with untimely night,

and a tempest rose like the gathered breath of mighty devils, and shaped the sea into vast ridges and abysmal valleys. The mast of ebony snapped like a reed in the wind, and the sail was torn asunder, and the helpless vessel pitched headlong into the dark troughs, and was hurled upward through veils of blinding foam to the giddy summits of the billows. Fulberra clung to the useless helm, and the slaves, at his command, took shelter in the forward cabin.

For countless hours they were borne onward at the will of the mad hurricane, and Fulber could see naught in the lowering gloom, except the pale crests of the beetling waves, and he could no longer tell the direction, of their course. Then, in that lurid dusk, he beheld at intervals another vessel that rode the storm-driven sea,

not far from the barge. He thought that the vessel was a galley such as might be used by merchants that voyaged among the southern aisles, trading for incense and plumes and vermilion. But its oars were mostly broken, and the toppled mast and sail hung forward on the prow. For a time the ships drove on together, till Fulber saw, in a rifting of the gloom, the sharp and sombre crags of an unknown shore,

with sharper towers that lifted palely above them. He could not turn the helm, and the barge and its companion vessel were carried toward the looming rocks, till Fulbera thought that they would crash thereon. But, as if by some enchantment, even as it had risen, the sea fell abruptly in a windless calm, and quiet sunlight poured from a clearing sky, and the barge was left on a broad crescent of ochre yellow sand between the crags and the lulling waters, with the galley beside it.

Dazed and marvelling, Fulberle leaned on the helm, while his slaves crept timidly forth from the cabin, and men began to appear on the decks of the galley. And the king was about to hail these men, some of whom were dressed as humble sailors and others in the fashion of rich merchants, but he heard a laughter of strange voices, high and shrillan, somehow evil, that seemed to fall from above.

And looking up he saw that many people were descending a sort of stairway in the cliffs that enclosed the beach. The people drew near, thronging about the barge in the galley. They wore fantastic turbans of blood red and were clad in closely fitting robes of vulturing black. Their faces and hands were yellow as saffron. Their small and slaty eyes were set obliquely beneath lashless lids, and their thin lips, which smiled eternally, were crooked, crooked as the blades of scimiters. They bore sinister and wicked-looking weapons, in the form of sore-toothed swords and double-headed spears. Some of them bowed low before Fulbara, and addressed him obsequiously,

staring upon him all the while with an unblinking gauge that he could not fathom. Their speech was no less alien than their aspect. It was full of sharp and hissing sounds, and neither the king nor his slaves could comprehend it. But Fulbrook bespoke the court cautiously, in the mild and mellow flowing tongue of Yoros, and inspired the name of his land whereon the barge had been cast by the tempest.

Certain of the people seemed to understand him, for a light came in their slaty eyes at his question, and one of them answered brokenly in the language of yours, saying that the land was the Isle of Ucostrog. Then, with something of a covert evil in his smile, this person added that all shipwreck mariners and seafarers would receive a goodly welcome from Ildrack, the king of the Isle. But this, the heart of Fulbara sank within him, for he had heard numerous tales of Ucostroch in bygone years, and the tales were not such as would reassure a stranded. traveller. Ucostroch, which lay far to the east of Syntrum, was known commonly as the Isle of

the Torturers. The men said that all who landed upon it unaware, all were cast tither by the seas, were imprisoned by the inhabitants and were subjected later to unending curious tortures whose infliction formed the chief delight of these cruel beings. No man, it was rumoured, had ever escaped from Uchostroch, but men, and he had lingered for years in its dungeons and hellish torture chambers, kept alive for the pleasure of King Ildrach and his followers. Also it was believed that the torturers were great magicians who could raise mighty storms with their enchantments and could cause vessels to be carried far from the maritime routes, and then fling them ashore upon Ucostrol.

Seeing that the yellow people were all about the barge and that no escape was possible, Fulber asked them to take him at once before King Ildrach. To Ildrach he would announce his name and royal rank, and it seemed to him, in his simplicity, that one king, even though cruel-hearted, would scarcely torture another or keep him captive. Also it might be that the inhabitants of Ucostrog had been somewhat maligned by the tales of travellers.

So Fulber and his slaves were surrounded by certain of the throng were led toward the palace of Vildrach, whose high sharp towers crowned the crags beyond the beach, rising above those clustered abodes in which the island people dwelt. And while they were climbing the hewn steps in the cliff, Fulber heard a loud outcry below on a clashing of steel against steel. And looking back, he saw that the crew of the stranded galley had drawn their swords and were fighting the islanders. But they were outnumbered greatly, and their resistance was borne down. by the swarming torturers, and most of them were taken alive, and Fulber's heart misgave him

sorely at this sight, and more and more did he mistrust the yellow people. Soon he came into the presence of Ildrach, who sat on a lofty brazen chair in a vast hall of the palace. Ildrak was taller by half ahead than any of his followers, and his features were like a mask of evil route from some pale gilded metal, and he was clad in vestments of a strange hue, like sea-purple brightened with fresh flowing blood. About him were many guardsmen, armed with terrible scythe-like weapons, and the sullen, slant-eyed guards of the palace, in skirts of vermilion and breast-cups of Lazuli, went to and fro among huge basaltic columns. About the hall stood numerous engineers of wood and stone and metal such as Fulbera had never beheld, and having a formidable

aspect with their heavy chains, their beds of iron teeth and their cords and their pulleys of fish skin. The young king of Yoros went forward with a royal and fearless bearing, and addressed Ildrach, who sat motionless and eyed him with a level on winking gaze. And Fulbara told Ildrack his name and station, and the calamity that had caused him to flee from Yoros, and he mentioned also his urgent desire to reach the Isle of Syntrum. It is a long voyage to Syntrum, said Ildrach, with a subtle smile. Also, it is not our custom to permit guests to depart without fully having tasted the hospitality of the Isle of Ucastrog.

Therefore, King Fulberra, I must beg you to curb your impatience. We have much to show you here and many diversions to offer. My chamberlains will now conduct you to a room befitting your royal rank. But first I must ask you to leave with me the sword that you carry at your side. The swords are often sharp and I do not omish my guest to suffer injury by their own hands. So Fulberus sword was taken from him by one of the palace guards, and a small ruby-hilted dagger that he carried was also removed. Then several of the guards, hemming him in with their scythe weapons,

led him from the hall and by many corridors and downward flights of stairs into the soft rock beneath the palace. And he knew not whether his three slaves were taken or what disposition was made of the captured crew of the galley. And soon he passed from the daylight into cavernous halls illumined by sulphur-coloured flames in copper crescents. And all around him, in hidden chambers, he heard the sound of dismal moans and loud maniacal howlings that seemed to beat and die upon adamantine doors. In one of these halls, Fulbrough and his guardsman met a young girl, fairer and less southern of aspect than the others.

And Fulber thought that the girl smiled upon him compassionately as he went by, and it seemed that she murmured faintly in the language of Yoros. Take heart, King Fulber, for there is one who would help you. And the words were, apparently not heated or understood by the guards who knew only the harsh and hissing tongue of Uchastrol. After descending many stairs, they came to a ponderous door of bronze, and the door was unlocked by one of the guards,

and Fulber was compelled to enter, and the door clanged doloriously behind him. The chamber into which he had been thrust was walled on three sides with the dark stone of the island, and was walled on the fourth with heavy, unbreakable glass. Beyond the glass he saw the blue-green glimmering waters of the undersea, lit by the hanging cressids of the chamber, and in the waters were great devilfish whose tentacles writhed along the wall, and huge pythonomorphs with fabulous golden coils receding in the gloom, and the floating corpses of men that stared in upon him with eyeballs from which the lids had been excised.

There was a couch in one corner of the dungeon, close to the wall of glass, and, for Food and drink had been supplied for Fulbering vessels of wood. The king laid himself down, weary and hopeless, without tasting the food, and then, lying with close-shut eyes while the dead men and sea-monsters peered in upon him by the glare of the cressids, he strove to forget his griefs and the dolorous doom that impended. Through his clouding terror and sorrow, he seemed to see the comely face of the girl who'd smiled upon him with compassion, and who, alone of all he'd met in Ucustrog, had spoken to him with words of kindness. The face returned ever and anon with a soft haunting, a gentle sorcery,

and Fulber felt, for the first time in many sons, the dim stirring of his buried youth and the vague, obscure desire of life. So, after a while he slept, and the face of the girl came still before him in his dreams. The crescets burned above him with undiminished flames when he awakened, and the sea beyond the wall of glass was thronged with the same monsters as before, or with others of like kind. But amid the floating corpses,

he now beheld the flayed bodies of his own slaves, who, after being tortured by the island people, had been cast forth into the submarine cavern that adjoined his dungeon, so that he might see them on awakening. He sickened with new horror at the sight, but even as he stared at the dead faces, the door of bronze swung open with a sullen grinding, and his guards entered. Seeing that he'd not consumed the food and water provided for him, they forced him to eat and drink a little, menacing him with their broad crooked blades till he complied. And then they led him from the dungeon and took him before King Ildrach in the great hall of torches. Fulbrass saw by the level golden light through the palace windows and the long shadows of the columns and machines of torment,

that the time was early dawn. The hall was crowded with the torturers and their women, and many seemed to look on while others, of both sexes, busied themselves with ominous preparations. And Fulber saw that a tall, brazen statue, with cruel and demonian visage, like some implacable god of the underworld, was now standing at the wrongful. right hand of Ildrack where he sat aloft on his brazen chair. Fulber was thrust forward by his guards, and Ildrack greeted him briefly with a wily smile that preceded the words and lingered after them. And when Ildreck had spoken, the brazen image also began to speak, addressing Fulbara in the

language of Yoros, with strident and metallic tones, and telling him with full and minute circumstance the various infernal tortures to which he was to be subjected on that day. When the statue had done speaking, Fulbara heard a soft whisper in his ear, and saw beside him the fair girl whom he had previously met in nether corridors, in netherc, it. And saw beside him the fair girl whom he had previously met in the nether corridors. And the girl, seemingly unheeded by the torturers, said to him, be courageous and endure bravely all that is inflicted for I shall affect your release before another day

if this be possible." Fulber was cheered by the girl's assurance and it seemed to him that she was fairer to look upon them before and he thought that her eyes regarded him tenderly and the twin desires of love and life was strangely resurrected in his heart to fortify him against the torches of Ildra. of that which was done to Fulbara for the wicked pleasure of King Ildrak and his people it were not well to speak fully for the islanders of Ucostrog had designed innumerable torments curious and subtle wherewith to harry and extricate the five senses and they would harry the brain itself driving it to extremes more terrible than madness

and could take away the dearest treasures of memory and leave unutterable foulness in their place. On that day, however, they did not torture Fulbera to the uttermost, but they racked his ears with cacophonous sounds, with evil flutes that chilled the blood and curdled it upon his heart, with deep drums that seemed to ache in all of his tissues and thin taboas that wrenched his very bones. They then compelled him to breathe the mounting-finding,

fumes of brazias, wherein the dry gall of dragons and the adipagery of dead cannibals were burned together with feted wood. Then, when the fire had died down, they freshened it with the oil of vampire bats and fulberous swooned, unable to bear the fetter any longer. Later they stripped away his kingly vestments and fastened about his body a silken girdle that had been freshly dipped in acid corrosive only to human flesh. And the acid, it ate slowly, fretting his skin with infinite pangs. Then, after removing the girdle lest it slay him, the torch was brought in certain creatures that had the shape of e-long serpents, but were covered from head to table sable hairs like those of a caterpillar. And these creatures twined themselves

tightly about the arms and legs of Fulbera. And though he fought wildly in his revulsion, he could not loosen them with his hands, and the hairs that were the hairs that. that covered their constringent coils began to pierce his limbs like a million tiny needles till he screamed with agony. And where his breath failed him and he could no longer scream, the baby serpents were induced to relinquish their hold by a languorous piping of which the islanders knew the secret. They dropped away and left him, but the mark of their coils was imprinted readily about

his limbs, and around his body they burned the raw branding of the girdle. King Ildrach and his people looked on with a dreadful gloating, for in such things they took their joy, and strove to pacify an implacable obscure desire. But seeing now that Fulborough could endure no more, and wishing to wreak their will upon him for many future days, they took him back to his dungeon. Lying sick with remembered horror,

feverish with pain, he longed not for the clemency of death, but hoped for the coming of the gunging of the gulf. girl to release him as she had promised. The long hours passed with a half-delirious tedium, and the crescents whose flames had been changed to crimson appeared to fill his eyes with flowing blood, and the dead man and the seaman was as swam as if in blood beyond the wall of glass, and the girl came not, and Fulber had begun to despair. Then, at last, he heard the door open gently, and he had the door opened gently,

and not with the harsh clangor that had proclaimed the entrance of his guards. Turning, he saw the girl who stole swiftly to his couch with a lifted fingertip in joining silence. She told him with soft whispers that her plan had failed, but surely on the following night she would be able to drug the guards and obtain the keys to the outer gates, and Fulber could escape from the palace to a hidden cove, in which a boat with water and provisions lay ready for his use. She prayed him to endure for another day the torments of Ildrach And to this perforce he consented

And he thought that the girl loved him for Tenderly she caressed his feverish brow And rubbed his torturous burning limbs with a soothing ointment He deemed that her eyes were soft With a compassion that was more than pity And so Fulber believed the girl entrusted her And took heart against the horror of the coming day her name it seemed was ilvar and her mother was a woman of yoros who had married one of the evil islanders

choosing this repugnant union as an alternative to the flaying knives of ildrack too soon the girl went away pleading the great danger of discovery and closed the door softly upon fulbrook and after a while the king slept and ilvar returned to him amid the delirious abominations of his dreams and sustained him against him against the terror of strange hells. At dawn the guards came with their hooked weapons and led him again before Ildrack. And again, the brazen, demonic statue, in a strident voice,

announced the fearful ordeals that he was to undergo. And this time he saw the other captives, including the crew and merchants of the galley, were also awaiting the malefic ministrations of the torturers in the vast hall. Once more in the throng of watchers, the girl Ilvar pressed close to him, unreprimounded by his guards and murmured words of comfort, so that Fulbara was inheartened against the enormities foretold by the brazen oracular image,

and indeed a bold and hopeful heart was required to endure the ordeals of that day. Among other things less goodly to be mentioned, the torturers held before Fulbara a mirror of strange wizardry, wherein his own face was reflected as if seen after death. The rigid features, as he gazed upon them, became marked with the green and bluish marbling of corruption, and the withering flesh fell in on the sharp bones, and displayed the visible fretting of the world. Hearing, meanwhile, the Dolores groans and agonizing cries of his fellow captives all about the hall, he beheld other faces, dead, swollen, lidless, and flayed,

that seemed to reproach him from behind and to throng about his own face in the mirror. Their looks were dank and dripping, like the hair of corpses recovered from the sea, and seaweed was mingled within the locks. Then, turning at a cold and clammy touch, he found that these faces were no illusion, but the actual reflection of cadavers drawn from under sea by a maligned sorcery that had entered the hall of Ildrack like living men and were peering over his shoulder. His own slaves, with flesh that the sea-things had gnawn even to the bone,

were among them, and the slaves came toward him with glaring eyes that saw only the voidness of death. And beneath the sorceress control of Ildrack, their evilly animated corpses began to assail, Fulbara, clawing at his face and raiment with half-eaten fingers. And Fulbara, faint with loathing, struggled against his dead slaves, who knew not the voice of their master, and were as deaf as the wheels and racks of torment used by Ildrack. Anon the drowned and dripping corpses went away, and Fulborough was stripped by the tortures and was laid supine on the palace floor, with iron rings that bound him closely to the flags at knee and wrist, at elbow and ankle. Then they brought in the disinterred body of a woman, nearly eaten, in which a myriad maggots swarmed on the uncovered bones and tatters of dark corruption, and this body they placed on the right hand of Fulbrough. and also they fetch the carrion of a black goat that was nearly touched with beginning decay,

and they laid it beside him on the left hand. Then, across Fulber, from right to left, the hungry maggots crawled in a long and undulgent wave. After the consummation of this torture, there came many others that were equally ingenious and atrocious, and were well designed for the delectation of King Ildrach and his people, and Fulber endured the tortures valiantly, upheld by the thought of Ilva. Vainly, however, on the night that followed this day, he waited in his dungeon for the girl. The Cresits burned with a bloodier crimson,

and new corpses were among the flayed and floating dead in the sea cavern, and strange double-bodied serpents on the nether deep arose with an endless squirming, and their horned heads appeared to bloat immeasurably against the crystal wall. And yet the girl Ilva came not to free him as she promised, and the night passed. But though despair resumed its old dominion in the heart of Fulbara, and terror came with talons steeped in fresh venom, he refused to doubt Ilva, telling himself that she had been delayed or prevented by some unforeseen mishap. At the dawn of the third day, he was again to be able to be able to.

taken before Ildra. The brazen image, announcing the ordeals of the day, told him that he was to be bound on a wheel of adamant, and lying on the wheel was to drink a drugged wine that would steal away his royal memories forever, and would conduct his naked soul in a long pilgrimage through monstrous and infamous hells, before bringing it back to the hall of Ildrack and the broken body on the wheel. Then certain women of the torturers, laughing obscenely, came forward and bound King Fulberra to the Adamantine wheel with thongs of dragon-guards. And after they'd done this, the girl Ilva, smiling with the shameless exultation of open cruelty, appeared before Fulbara and stood close beside him, holding a golden cup that contained the drugged wife.

She mocked him for his folly and credulity in trusting her promises, and the other women and the male torturers, even to Ildrack on his brazen seat, laughed loudly and evilly at Fulbara and praised Ilva for the perfidy she'd practised upon him. So Fulbrah's heart grew sick with a darker despair than any he had yet known. The brief, piteous love that had been born amid sorrow and agony perished within him, leaving but ashes steeped in gall. And yet gazing at Ilva with sad eyes, he uttered no word of reproach. He wished to live no long.

and yearning for a swift death, he bethought him of the wizard ring of Vemdes, and of that which Vemdes had said would follow its removal from his finger. He still wore the ring, which the torturers had deemed a bauble of small value, but his hands were bound tightly to the wheel, and he could not remove it. So, with a bitter cunning, knowing full well that the islanders would not take away the ring if he should offer it to them, He feigned a sudden madness and cried wildly. Steal my memories, if you will, with your accursed wine, and send me through a thousand hells and bring me back again to Ucustrog. But take not the ring which I wear on my middle finger, for it is more precious to me than many kingdoms or the pale breasts of love.

Well, hearing this, King Ildrack rose from his brazen seats, and bidding Ilvar to delay the administration of the wine, he came forward and inspected curiously the ring of Vemdes, which gleamed darkly, set with its rayless gem on Fulbrah's finger, and all the while Fulberra cried out against him in a frenzy as if fearing that he would take the ring. So Ildrack, deeming that he could plague the prisoner thereby and could heighten his suffering a little, did the very thing for which Fulbara had planned. and the ring came easily from the shrunken finger, and Ildrack, wishing to mock the royal captive,

placed it on his own middle digit. Then, while Ildrack regarded the captive with a more deeply graven smile of evil on the pale, gilded mask of his face, there came to King Fulberra of Eurus, the dreadful and long-for thing, the silver death. That had slept so long in his bed,

body beneath the magical abeyance of the ring of Vemdes was made manifest even as he hung on the Adamantine wheel. His limbs stiffened with another rigor and that of agony, and his face shone brightly with the coming of the death, and so he died. Then, to Ilvar and to many of the torturers who stood wondering about the wheel, the chill and instant contagion of the silver death was communicated. They fell even where they'd stood And the pestilence remain like a glittering light On the faces and the hands of the men And shone forth from the nude bodies of the women

And the plague passed along the immense hall And the other captives of King Ildrack Were released thereby from their various torments And the torturous found socease From the dire longing that they could assuage Only through the pain of their fellow men And through all the palace and throughout the isle of Ucustra, the death fell swiftly, visible in those upon whom it had breathed,

but otherwise unseen and impalpable. But Illrat, wearing the ring of Vendiz, was immune, and guessing not the reason for his immunity, he beheld with consternation the doom that had overtaken his followers, and watched in stupefaction the freeing of his victims. Then, fearful of some inimic, sorcery. He rushed from the hall, and, standing in the early sun on the palace terrace above the sea, he tore the ring of Vemdes from his finger and hurled it to the foamy billows far below, dimming in his terror that the ring was perhaps the source or agent of the unknown-style magic. And so Ildrach, in his turn, when all the others had fallen, was smitten by the silver death. And its peace descended upon him where he lay in his robes of blood-bright and purple,

with features shining pale to the unclouded sun. And oblivion claimed the Isle of O'Gastrog. And the torturers were one with the torture. Well, I sincerely hope that you enjoyed tonight's Four Tales of Terror, three old-school classics and one modern classic. If you did, please do me a little favor, and leave a nice review and a five-star rating wherever you happen to get your podcasts.

That is enough for me for one week, but of course I'll be back again this time next week same time, same place until then very very sweet dreams and bye bye