The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) đ
Description
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Draculaâand outsold it six to one that year. Like Dracula, the novel is steeped in the evil mysteries of an ancient horror: in this case, a mysterious ancient Egyptian creature bent on revenge.
The story is told through the sequential points of view of a group of middle-class Victorians who find themselves enmeshed in the creatureâs plot. The creature, in the guise of an Egyptian man, appears in London seeking revenge against a popular member of Parliament. They soon find out that it can shape shift into other things, including women; that it can control minds and use hypnosis; and that it wonât stop at anything to get the revenge it seeks. The heroes are soon caught in a whirlwind of chase scenes, underground laboratories, secret cults, and more as they race to foil the creature.
While The Beetle didnât earn the lasting popularity of Stokerâs counterpart, it remains a strange and unique morsel of Victorian sensationalist fiction.
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- Author: Richard Marsh
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She paused, as if to collect her thoughts. To listen to her words, and to think of the suffering which they meant to her, was almost more than I could endure. I would have thrown away the world to have been able to take her in my arms, and soothe her fears. I knew her to be, in general, the least hysterical of young women; little wont to become the prey of mere delusions; and, incredible though it sounded, I had an innate conviction that, even in its wildest periods, her story had some sort of basis in solid fact. What that basis amounted to, it would be my business, at any and every cost, quickly to determine.
âYou know how you have always laughed at me because of my objection toâ âcockroaches, and how, in spring, the neighbourhood of May-bugs has always made me uneasy. As soon as I got into bed I felt that something of the kind was in the room.â
âSomething of what kind?â
âSome kind ofâ âbeetle. I could hear the whirring of its wings; I could hear its droning in the air; I knew that it was hovering above my head; that it was coming lower and lower, nearer and nearer. I hid myself; I covered myself all over with the clothesâ âthen I felt it bumping against the coverlet. And, Sydney!â She drew closer. Her blanched cheeks and frightened eyes made my heart bleed. Her voice became but an echo of itself. âIt followed me.â
âMarjorie!â
âIt got into the bed.â
âYou imagined it.â
âI didnât imagine it. I heard it crawl along the sheets, till it found a way between them, and then it crawled towards me. And I felt itâ âagainst my face.â âAnd itâs there now.â
âWhere?â
She raised the forefinger of her left hand.
âThere!â âCanât you hear it droning?â
She listened, intently. I listened too. Oddly enough, at that instant the droning of an insect did become audible.
âItâs only a bee, child, which has found its way through the open window.â
âI wish it were only a bee, I wish it were.â âSydney, donât you feel as if you were in the presence of evil? Donât you want to get away from it, back into the presence of God?â
âMarjorie!â
âPray, Sydney, pray!â âI canât!â âI donât know why, but I canât!â
She flung her arms about my neck, and pressed herself against me in paroxysmal agitation. The violence of her emotion bade fair to unman me too. It was so unlike Marjorieâ âand I would have given my life to save her from a toothache. She kept repeating her own wordsâ âas if she could not help it.
âPray, Sydney, pray!â
At last I did as she wished me. At least, there is no harm in prayingâ âI never heard of its bringing hurt to anyone. I repeated aloud the Lordâs Prayerâ âthe first time for I know not how long. As the divine sentences came from my lips, hesitatingly enough, I make no doubt, her tremors ceased. She became calmer. Until, as I reached the last great petition, âDeliver us from evil,â she loosed her arms from about my neck, and dropped upon her knees, close to my feet. And she joined me in the closing words, as a sort of chorus.
âFor Thine is the Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory, forever and ever. Amen.â
When the prayer was ended, we both of us were still. She with her head bowed, and her hands clasped; and I with something tugging at my heartstrings which I had not felt there for many and many a year, almost as if it had been my motherâs hand;â âI daresay that sometimes she does stretch out her hand, from her place among the angels, to touch my heartstrings, and I know nothing of it all the while.
As the silence still continued, I chanced to glance up, and there was old Lindon peeping at us from his hiding-place behind the screen. The look of amazed perplexity which was on his big red face struck me with such a keen sense of the incongruous that it was all I could do to keep from laughter. Apparently the sight of us did nothing to lighten the fog which was in his brain, for he stammered out, in what was possibly intended for a whisper,
âIsâ âis she m-mad?â
The whisperâ âif it was meant for a whisperâ âwas more than sufficiently audible to catch his daughterâs ears. She startedâ âraised her headâ âsprang to her feetâ âturnedâ âand saw her father.
âPapa!â
Immediately her sire was seized with an access of stuttering.
âW-w-what the d-devilâs theâ âthe m-m-meaning of this?â
Her utterance was clear enoughâ âI fancy her parent found it almost painfully clear.
âRather it is for me to ask, what is the meaning of this! Is it possible, that, all the time, you have actually been concealed behind thatâ âscreen?â
Unless I am mistaken the old gentleman cowered before the directness of his daughterâs gazeâ âand endeavoured to conceal the fact by an explosion of passion.
âDo-donât you s-speak to me li-like that, you un-undutiful girl! Iâ âIâm your father!â
âYou certainly are my father; though I
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