The Beetle by Richard Marsh (read e books online free txt) ๐
Description
The Beetle was published in 1897, the same year as Draculaโand 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 creatureโs 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 wonโt 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 didnโt earn the lasting popularity of Stokerโs counterpart, it remains a strange and unique morsel of Victorian sensationalist fiction.
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- Author: Richard Marsh
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โโโOn condition,โ I replied, โthat you sing me another song.โ
โโโAh, monsieur, with the greatest pleasure in the world I will sing you twenty.โ
โShe was almost, if not quite, as good as her word. She entertained me with song after song. I may safely say that I have seldom if ever heard melody more enchanting. All languages seemed to be the same to her. She sang in French and Italian, German and Englishโ โin tongues with which I was unfamiliar. It was in these Eastern harmonies that she was most successful. They were indescribably weird and thrilling, and she delivered them with a verve and sweetness which was amazing. I sat at one of the little tables with which the room was dotted, listening entranced.
โTime passed more rapidly than I supposed. While she sang I sipped the liquor with which the old woman had supplied me. So enthralled was I by the display of the girlโs astonishing gifts that I did not notice what it was I was drinking. Looking back I can only surmise that it was some poisonous concoction of the creatureโs own. That one small glass had on me the strangest effect. I was still weak from the fever which I had only just succeeded in shaking off, and that, no doubt, had something to do with the result. But, as I continued to sit, I was conscious that I was sinking into a lethargic condition, against which I was incapable of struggling.
โAfter a while the original performer ceased her efforts, and, her companions taking her place, she came and joined me at the little table. Looking at my watch I was surprised to perceive the lateness of the hour. I rose to leave. She caught me by the wrist.
โโโDo not go,โ she said;โ โshe spoke English of a sort, and with the queerest accent. โAll is well with you. Rest awhile.โ
โYou will smileโ โI should smile, perhaps, were I the listener instead of you, but it is the simple truth that her touch had on me what I can only describe as a magnetic influence. As her fingers closed upon my wrist, I felt as powerless in her grasp as if she held me with bands of steel. What seemed an invitation was virtually a command. I had to stay whether I would or wouldnโt. She called for more liquor, and at what again was really her command I drank of it. I do not think that after she touched my wrist I uttered a word. She did all the talking. And, while she talked, she kept her eyes fixed on my face. Those eyes of hers! They were a devilโs. I can positively affirm that they had on me a diabolical effect. They robbed me of my consciousness, of my power of volition, of my capacity to thinkโ โthey made me as wax in her hands. My last recollection of that fatal night is of her sitting in front of me, bending over the table, stroking my wrist with her extended fingers, staring at me with her awful eyes. After that, a curtain seems to descend. There comes a period of oblivion.โ
Mr. Lessingham ceased. His manner was calm and self-contained enough; but, in spite of that I could see that the mere recollection of the things which he told me moved his nature to its foundations. There was eloquence in the drawn lines about his mouth, and in the strained expression of his eyes.
So far his tale was sufficiently commonplace. Places such as the one which he described abound in the Cairo of today; and many are the Englishmen who have entered them to their exceeding bitter cost. With that keen intuition which has done him yeomanโs service in the political arena, Mr. Lessingham at once perceived the direction my thoughts were taking.
โYou have heard this tale before?โ โNo doubt. And often. The traps are many, and the fools and the unwary are not a few. The singularity of my experience is still to come. You must forgive me if I seem to stumble in the telling. I am anxious to present my case as baldly, and with as little appearance of exaggeration as possible. I say with as little appearance, for some appearance of exaggeration I fear is unavoidable. My case is so unique, and so out of the common run of our everyday experience, that the plainest possible statement must smack of the sensational.
โAs, I fancy, you have guessed, when understanding returned to me, I found myself in an apartment with which I was unfamiliar. I was lying, undressed, on a heap of rugs in a corner of a low-pitched room which was furnished in a fashion which, when I grasped the details, filled me with amazement. By my side knelt the Woman of the Songs. Leaning over, she wooed my mouth with kisses. I cannot describe to you the sense of horror and of loathing with which the contact of her lips oppressed me. There was about her something so unnatural, so inhuman, that I believe even then I could have destroyed her with as little sense of moral turpitude as if she had been some noxious insect.
โโโWhere am I?โ I exclaimed.
โโโYou are with the children of Isis,โ she replied. What she meant I did not know, and do not to this hour. โYou are in the hands of the great goddessโ โof the mother of men.โ
โโโHow did I come here?โ
โโโBy the loving kindness of the great mother.โ
โI do not, of course, pretend to give you the exact text of her words, but they were to that effect.
โHalf raising myself on the heap of rugs, I gazed about meโ โand was astounded at what I saw.
โThe place in which I was, though the reverse of lofty, was of considerable sizeโ โI could not conceive whereabouts it
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