Short Fiction quotes

The hands were of a dusky pallor, covered, like the body, with long, coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned King with a look of beast-like hate.

Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy.

One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

Imagine one of the awful bird-catching spiders of South America translated into human form, and endowed with intelligence just less than human, and you will have some faint conception of the terror inspired by the appalling effigy.

One remark is universally made by those to whom I have shown the picture: “It was drawn from the life.”

As soon as the first shock of his irresistible fright had subsided, Dennistoun stole a look at his hosts. The sacristan’s hands were pressed upon his eyes; his daughter, looking up at the cross on the wall, was telling her beads feverishly.

“It is he—it is he! I have seen him myself,” was his only comment; and to all questionings but one reply was vouchsafed:

“Deux fois je l’ai vu; mille fois je l’ai senti.”

He would tell them nothing of the provenance of the book, nor any details of his experiences. “I shall soon sleep, and my rest will be sweet. Why should you trouble me?” he said.

One November evening Stephen was sitting by the fire in the housekeeper’s room reflecting on his surroundings.

“Is Mr. Abney a good man, and will he go to heaven?” he suddenly asked, with the peculiar confidence which children possess in the ability of their elders to settle these questions, the decision of which is believed to be reserved for other tribunals.

“Good?—bless the child!” said Mrs. Bunch. “Master’s as kind a soul as ever I see! Didn’t I never tell you of the little boy as he took in out of the street, as you may say, this seven years back?

“I always do, Mrs. Bunch, as soon as I’ve said my prayers.”

“Ah, that’s a good child: always say your prayers, and then no one can’t hurt you.”

Herewith Mrs. Bunch addressed herself to mending the injured nightgown, with intervals of meditation, until bedtime. This was on a Friday night in March, 1812.

We have now arrived at March 24, 1812. It was a day of curious experiences for Stephen: a windy, noisy day, which filled the house and the gardens with a restless impression.

As Stephen stood by the fence of the grounds, and looked out into the park, he felt as if an endless procession of unseen people were sweeping past him on the wind, borne on resistlessly and aimlessly, vainly striving to stop themselves, to catch at something that might arrest their flight and bring them once again into contact with the living world of which they had formed a part.

After luncheon that day Mr. Abney said:

Williams wrote a postcard asking for the article to be sent on approval, along with some other engravings and sketches which appeared in the same catalogue. And so he passed without much excitement of anticipation to the ordinary labours of the day.

A parcel of any kind always arrives a day later than you expect it, and that of Mr. Britnell proved, as I believe the right phrase goes, no exception to the rule.

It was delivered at the museum by the afternoon post of Saturday, after Mr.

Very nearly the exact duplicate of it may be seen in a good many old inn parlours, or in the passages of undisturbed country mansions at the present moment.

It was a rather indifferent mezzotint, and an indifferent mezzotint is, perhaps, the worst form of engraving known.

It presented a full-face view of a not very large manor-house of the last century, with three rows of plain sashed windows with rusticated masonry about them, a parapet with balls or vases at the angles, and a small portico in the centre.

… of all I like fancying what life in such a house was when it was first built, and in the piping times of landlords’ prosperity, and not least now, when, if money is not so plentiful, taste is more varied and life quite as interesting.

I wish to have one of these houses, and enough money to keep it together and entertain my friends in it modestly.

But this is a digression. I have to tell you of a curious series of events which happened in such a house as I have tried to describe. It is Castringham Hall in Suffolk.

onely she looked upon those that laid Hands upon her with so direfull and venomous an Aspect that—as one of them afterwards assured me—the meer Thought of it preyed inwardly upon his Mind for six Months after.”

However, all that she is reported to have said was the seemingly meaningless words: “There will be guests at the Hall.”

Which she repeated more than once in an undertone.

Suddenly it got up and craned over the hole. Then a bit of the edge on which it stood gave way, and it went slithering in. Everyone looked up at the noise of the fall.

It is known to most of us that a cat can cry; but few of us have heard, I hope, such a yell as came out of the trunk of the great ash.

Two or three screams there were—the witnesses are not sure which—and then a slight and muffled noise of some commotion or struggling was all that came.

… conversation could have been diverted into the desired channel of Number 13, had not the lawyer at this moment begun to sing, and to sing in a manner which could leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was either exceedingly drunk or raving mad.

It was a high, thin voice that they heard, and it seemed dry, as if from long disuse.

Of words or tune there was no question. It went sailing up to a surprising height, and was carried down with a despairing moan as of a winter wind in a hollow chimney, or an organ whose wind fails suddenly.

His cry drew their eyes upon him for a moment; then Anderson looked at the door again. It was gone; the plaster wall of the passage stared him in the face, with a considerable gash in it where the crowbar had struck it.

Number 13 had passed out of existence.

For a brief space they stood perfectly still, gazing at the blank wall. An early cock in the yard beneath was heard to crow;

As to his character, it is not difficult to form some superficial opinion. He must have been an intelligent and cultivated man. It seems that he was near being a Fellow of his college at Oxford—Brasenose, as I judge from the Calendar.

His besetting fault was pretty clearly that of over-inquisitiveness, possibly a good fault in a traveller, certainly a fault for which this traveller paid dearly enough in the end.

On what proved to be his last expedition, he was plotting another book. Scandinavia, a region not widely known to Englishmen forty years ago, had struck him as an interesting field.

So he was not dead. And they led him away, and took him to the house at Nykjoping, and he died before the winter; but he went on pushing with his hands. Also Anders Bjornsen was there; but he was dead.

And I tell you this about Anders Bjornsen, that he was once a beautiful man, but now his face was not there, because the flesh of it was sucked away off the bones.

You understand that? My grandfather did not forget that. And they laid him on the bier which they brought, and they put a cloth over his head, and the priest walked before;

He remembered vaguely that the Templars, to whom this site had belonged, were in the habit of building round churches, and he thought a particular series of the humps or mounds near him did appear to be arranged in something of a circular form.

Few people can resist the temptation to try a little amateur research in a department quite outside their own, if only for the satisfaction of showing how successful they would have been had they only taken it up seriously.

Our Professor, however, if he felt something of this mean desire, was also truly anxious to oblige Mr. Disney. So he paced with care the circular area he had noticed, and wrote down its rough dimensions in his pocketbook.

He blew tentatively and stopped suddenly, startled and yet pleased at the note he had elicited.

It had a quality of infinite distance in it, and, soft as it was, he somehow felt it must be audible for miles round.

It was a sound, too, that seemed to have the power (which many scents possess) of forming pictures in the brain.

The next stage was that Parkins shut his eyes and determined to give sleep every chance. Here again over-excitement asserted itself in another form—that of making pictures.

Experto crede, pictures do come to the closed eyes of one trying to sleep, and are often so little to his taste that he must open his eyes and disperse them.

Parkins’s experience on this occasion was a very distressing one. He found that the picture which presented itself to him was continuous. When he opened his eyes, of course, it went;

“What in the world is the matter with you? What have you been up to? What have you seen?” said the two men.

“Ow, I seen it wive at me out of the winder,” wailed the boy, “and I don’t like it.”

“What window?” said the irritated Colonel. “Come, pull yourself together, my boy.”

There is really nothing more to tell, but, as you may imagine, the Professor’s views on certain points are less clear cut than they used to be.

His nerves, too, have suffered: he cannot even now see a surplice hanging on a door quite unmoved, and the spectacle of a scarecrow in a field late on a winter afternoon has cost him more than one sleepless night.

Then I heard him call softly, ‘All right, sir,’ and went on pulling out the great bag, in complete darkness.

It hung for an instant on the edge of the hole, then slipped forward on to my chest, and put its arms round my neck.

“My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth. I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind.

“My dear Gregory, I am telling you the exact truth.

I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind.

I can only just manage to tell you now the bare outline of the experience.

“

You never can tell with little boys. They have a mythology of their own.

There’s a subject for you, by the way—‘The Folklore of Private Schools.’ ”

“

‘Si tu non veneris ad me, ego veniam ad te,’ which means, I suppose, ‘If you don’t come to me, I’ll come to you.’

”

McLeod wriggled. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I can tell you one thing—he was beastly thin: and he looked as if he was wet all over: and,’ he said, looking round and whispering as if he hardly liked to hear himself, ‘

I’m not at all sure that he was alive.

’

“I was going to say, you might call on the Bishop; but I suppose it is no use my making any suggestion. And now do be getting ready, or half the morning will be gone.”

Mr. Anstruther’s face, which had shown symptoms of lengthening, shortened itself again, and he hurried from the room, and was soon heard giving orders in the passage.

Mrs. Anstruther, a stately dame of some fifty summers, proceeded, after a second consideration of the morning’s letters, to her housekeeping.

His hat was on the table, and he had a bald head. I waited a second or two looking at him rather particularly. I tell you, he had a very nasty bald head.

It looked to me dry, and it looked dusty, and the streaks of hair across it were much less like hair than cobwebs.

Well, I made a bit of a noise on purpose, coughed and moved my feet. He turned round and let me see his face—which I hadn’t seen before. I tell you again, I’m not mistaken.

I can’t very well tell them not to mention Dunning, can I? It would set them talking at once. Let’s hope it won’t occur to him.”

However, Mr. Karswell was an astute man.

This much is in the way of prologue. On an evening rather later in the same week, Mr.

The obvious course was to find a match, and also to consult his watch: he might as well know how many hours of discomfort awaited him. So he put his hand into the well-known nook under the pillow: only, it did not get so far.

What he touched was, according to his account, a mouth, with teeth, and with hair about it, and, he declares, not the mouth of a human being.

I do not think it is any use to guess what he said or did; but he was in a spare room with the door locked and his ear to it before he was clearly conscious again.

During the minutes that preceded the announcement of luncheon the party settled themselves on elaborate chairs in the drawing-room,

Humphreys, for his part, perspiring quietly in the consciousness that stock was being taken of him.

“I was just saying to Mr. Humphreys, my dear,” said Mr. Cooper, “that I hope and trust that his residence among us here in Wilsthorpe will be marked as a red-letter day.”

The drawing up of a catalogue raisonné would be a delicious occupation for winter. There were probably treasures to be found, too: even manuscripts, if Cooper might be trusted.

As he pursued his round the sense came upon him (as it does upon most of us in similar places) of the extreme unreadableness of a great portion of the collection.

“Editions of Classics and Fathers, and Picart’s Religious Ceremonies, and the Harleian Miscellany, I suppose are all very well, but who is ever going to read Tostatus Abulensis, or Pineda on Job, or a book like this?”

“Odd!” said Mr. Cooper. “Now I can’t hardly bear my hand on it. Something in the difference of temperament between us, I suppose.

I dare say you’re a chilly subject, Mr. Humphreys: I’m not: and there’s where the distinction lies.

All this summer I’ve slept, if you’ll believe me, practically in statu quo, and had my morning tub as cold as I could get it. Day out and day in—let me assist you with that string.”

It seemed to go not only through the paper, but through the table on which it lay. Yes, and through the floor below that, down, and still down, even into infinite depths. He craned over it, utterly bewildered.

Just as, when you were a child, you may have pored over a square inch of counterpane until it became a landscape with wooded hills, and perhaps even churches and houses, and you lost all thought of the true size of yourself and it, so this hole seemed to Humphreys for the moment the only thing in the world.

For some reason it was hateful to him from the first, but he had gazed at it for some moments before any feeling of anxiety came upon him;

Mr. Cooper’s view is that, humanly speaking, all these many solemn events have a meaning for us, if our limited intelligence permitted of our disintegrating it, while

Mr. Calton has been reminded of an aunt now gone from us, who, about the year 1866, had been lost for upwards of an hour and a half in the maze at Covent Gardens, or it might be Hampton Court.

One of the oddest things in the whole series of transactions is that the book which contained the Parable has entirely disappeared. Humphreys has never been able to find it since he copied out the passage to send to Lady Wardrop.

“ ‘Have you the keys of these things, Mrs. Maple?’ said Uncle Oldys.

His simple words let loose a torrent (not violent, but copious) of speech: had she been a shade or two higher in the social scale, Mrs. Maple might have stood as the model for Miss Bates.

“ ‘Oh, Doctor, and Miss, and you too, sir,’ she said, acknowledging my presence with a bend, ‘them keys!

They hastened off together. I could hear Mrs. Maple beginning an explanation which, I doubt not, lasted into the furthest recesses of the housekeeper’s department. Uncle Oldys and I were left alone. ‘A valuable servant,’ he said, nodding towards the door. ‘

Nothing goes wrong under her: the speeches are seldom over three minutes.

’ ‘How will Miss Oldys manage to make her remember about the box?’ I asked.

“We left that curious room not unwillingly, I think. Uncle Oldys’s orders were carried out that same day. And so,” concludes Mr. Spearman, “

Whitminster has a Bluebeard’s chamber, and, I am rather inclined to suspect, a jack-in-the-box, awaiting some future occupant of the residence of the senior prebendary.

”

Denton’s friend who had been seriously indisposed, but was now better, and to a piece of china which Mr. Denton’s friend had purchased some months before at a price much below its true value.

From which you will rightly infer that the conversation was rather in the nature of a monologue.

In due time, however, the friend bethought himself that Mr. Denton was there for a purpose, and said he, “What are you looking out for in particular? I don’t think there’s much in this lot.”

What he had been touching rose to meet him. It was in the attitude of one that had crept along the floor on its belly, and it was, so far as could be recollected, a human figure.

But of the face which was now rising to within a few inches of his own no feature was discernible, only hair.

Shapeless as it was, there was about it so horrible an air of menace that as he bounded from his chair and rushed from the room he heard himself moaning with fear: and doubtless he did right to fly.

but they spoke very short, and I could see they was troubled. My word! that was a noise—’ungry-like, as if it was calling after someone that wouldn’t come.

If ever you felt you wanted company, it would be when you was waiting for it to begin again.

I believe two or three nights there was men put on to watch in different parts of the Close; but they all used to get together in one corner, the nearest they could to the High Street, and nothing came of it.

but there was a thick mist on the way back, and I was not in trim for wandering about unknown pastures, especially on an evening when bushes looked like men, and a cow lowing in the distance might have been the last trump.

I assure you, if Uncle Henry had stepped out from among the trees in a little copse which borders the path at one place, carrying his head under his arm, I should have been very little more uncomfortable than I was.

To tell you the truth, I was rather expecting something of the kind. But I must drop my pen for the moment: Mr. Lucas, the curate, is announced.

It is a very common thing, in my experience, to find papers shut up in old books; but one of the rarest things to come across any such that are at all interesting.

Still it does happen, and one should never destroy them unlooked at.

There was no striking clock within earshot—none on the staircase, none in the stable, none in the distant church tower.

Yet it is indubitable that Mr. Dillet was startled out of a very pleasant slumber by a bell tolling One.

He was so much startled that he did not merely lie breathless with wide-open eyes, but actually sat up in his bed.

It’s been a lesson to me, I know that. I shan’t buy no more dolls’ houses, nor waste no more money on the pictures—and as to this business of poisonin’ grandpa, well, if I know myself, I never ’ad much of a turn for that.

Live and let live: that’s bin my motto throughout life, and I ain’t found it a bad one.

”

The glass in the nave windows was chiefly armorial; and in the chancel were figure-subjects, of the kind that may be seen at Abbey Dore, of Lord Scudamore’s work.

But this is not an archaeological review.

While Mr. Davidson was still busy examining the remains of the organ (attributed to one of the Dallams, I believe), old Mr. Avery had stumped up into the chancel and was lifting the dust-cloths from the blue-velvet cushions of the stall-desks.

Porter, “and it’s a funny thing to me I don’t, with the feeling I have as there’s someone settin’ here—no, it’s the other side, just within the screen—and lookin’ at me all the time I’m dustin’ in the gallery and pews.

But I never yet see nothin’ worse than myself, as the sayin’ goes, and I kindly hope I never may.

”

Those who spend the greater part of their time in reading or writing books are, of course, apt to take rather particular notice of accumulations of books when they come across them.

They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment.

The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy.

They will not pass a stall, a shop, or even a bedroom-shelf without reading some title, and if they find themselves in an unfamiliar library, no host need trouble himself further about their entertainment.

The putting of dispersed sets of volumes together, or the turning right way up of those which the dusting housemaid has left in an apoplectic condition, appeals to them as one of the lesser Works of Mercy.

Happy in these employments, and in occasionally opening an eighteenth-century octavo, to see “what it is all about,” and to conclude after five minutes that it deserves the seclusion it now enjoys, I had reached the middle of a wet August afternoon at Betton Court—

There was no mistake possible now. It was from outside. “With no language but a cry” was the thought that flashed into my mind.

Hideous it was beyond anything I had heard or have heard since, but I could read no emotion in it, and doubted if I could read any intelligence.

All its effect was to take away every vestige, every possibility, of enjoyment, and make this no place to stay in one moment more. Of course there was nothing to be seen:

… to worse, and made out false papers to gain thousands of pounds up in London, and at last they was proved in law to be false, and she would have been tried and put to death very like, only she escaped away for the time.

But no one can’t avoid the curse that’s laid on them that removes the landmark, and so we take it she can’t leave Betton before someone take and put it right again.

”

How pleasant it can be, alone in a first-class railway carriage, on the first day of a holiday that is to be fairly long, to dawdle through a bit of English country that is unfamiliar, stopping at every station.

You have a map open on your knee, and you pick out the villages that lie to right and left by their church towers. You marvel at the complete stillness that attends your stoppage at the stations, broken only by a footstep crunching the gravel.

Nor could you ask for a better place.

Midsummer afternoon, shade and scent of a vast lime-tree, cool, swirling water within five yards.

It was long before either of them suggested a move. But about six, Mr. Richards sat up, knocked out his pipe, and said: “Look here, it’s cool enough now to think of a stroll, if you’re inclined? All right:

“

Well, if you don’t want it guessed, you shouldn’t put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it.

”

The Squire replied with a few words and a gruff laugh, and called on Fanshawe to come and be shown his room. And I do not think that anything else happened that night which bears on my story.

Except, perhaps, the sensation which invaded Fanshawe in the small hours that something had been let out which ought not to have been let out.

It came into his dreams. He was walking in a garden which he seemed half to know, and stopped in front of a rockery made of old wrought stones, pieces of window tracery from a church, and even bits of figures.

“I did not,” said Fanshawe, emphatically. “I dare say I was an ass, but as soon as it dawned on me where I was, I just shouldered my machine and did my best to run.

It seemed to me as if I was in an unholy evil sort of graveyard, and I was most profoundly thankful that it was one of the longest days and still sunlight.

Well, I had a horrid run, even if it was only a few hundred yards. Everything caught on everything: handles and spokes and carrier and pedals—caught in them viciously, or I fancied so. I fell over at least five times.

He hadn’t time for a proper look, for old Baxter shouted out to him from the bed:

‘Put it down, you fool! Do you want to look through a dead man’s eyes?’

and it startled him so that he did put it down, and then he asked Baxter what he meant. And Baxter insisted on him handing it over, and said the man he bought it from was dead, or some such nonsense.

After a few ineffectual attempts, “Lord, how heavy they are!” he said impatiently, and in the same instant dropped them on to the stones, and the lens splintered and the barrel cracked: a little pool of liquid formed on the stone slab.

It was inky black, and the odour that rose from it is not to be described.

“Filled and sealed, eh?” said the Squire. “If I could bring myself to touch it, I dare say we should find the seal. So that’s what came of his boiling and distilling, is it? Old Ghoul!”

There were cottages of bright red brick with slate roofs … but why do I encumber you with these commonplace details?

The fact is that they come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of Seaburgh.

I should like to be sure that I had allowed the right ones to get on to the paper. But I forgot. I have not quite done with the word-painting business yet.

Paxton broke in impatiently, “I beg your pardon: you’ve been very kind, but don’t you see it’s got to go back, and I daren’t be there at night, and daytime’s impossible.

Perhaps, though, you don’t see: well, then, the truth is that I’ve never been alone since I touched it.

” I was beginning some fairly stupid comment, but Long caught my eye, and I stopped. Long said: “I think I do see, perhaps: but wouldn’t it be—a relief—to tell us a little more clearly what the situation is?”

I had hours to get through before I could decently come back to the hotel. First I spent time filling up my tunnel and covering my tracks, and all the while he was there trying to thwart me.

Sometimes, you know, you see him, and sometimes you don’t, just as he pleases, I think: he’s there, but he has some power over your eyes.

Well, I wasn’t off the spot very long before sunrise, and then I had to get to the junction for Seaburgh, and take a train back. And though it was daylight fairly soon, I don’t know if that made it much better.

He said: “It began when I was first prospecting, and put me off again and again. There was always somebody—a man—standing by one of the firs. This was in daylight, you know. He was never in front of me.

I always saw him with the tail of my eye on the left or the right, and he was never there when I looked straight for him.

I would lie down for quite a long time and take careful observations, and make sure there was no one, and then when I got up and began prospecting again, there he was. And he began to give me hints, besides;

full moon making that path we know across the sea: the eternal whisper of the Scotch firs just above us and of the sea in front.

Yet, in all this quiet, an acute, an acrid consciousness of a restrained hostility very near us, like a dog on a leash that might be let go at any moment.

Paxton pulled himself out of the hole, and stretched a hand back to us. “Give it to me,” he whispered, “unwrapped.” We pulled off the handkerchiefs, and he took the crown. The moonlight just fell on it as he snatched it.