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137 pages

English

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The Undying Monster (1922) is a horror novel by Jessie Douglas Kerruish. Recognized as a groundbreaking work of lycanthropy, or werewolf fiction, The Undying Monster was adapted into a successful 1942 horror film starring James Ellison, Heather Angel, and John Howard.

Haunted for generations, the Hammand family has grown accustomed to tragedy. Early deaths, suicides, and gruesome injuries plague their family tree, and they have long been regarded as pariahs in their rural English community. When Oliver Hammand survives a vicious attack while walking in the woods one night, his sister Swanhild resolves to put an end to the ancient curse. Seeking the guidance of Luna Bartendale, a powerful psychic, Swanhild convinces her brother to join her on a journey of discovery and danger to not only free their family from its dreadful cycle, but to save their own young lives. Together with Luna, they scour ancient archives, investigate ruined graveyards, and search for whatever clues they can find. As they delve deep into the heart of their family’s mystery, Oliver falls deeply in love with Luna. Led to the edge of existence itself, the trio find themselves face to face with a horror too terrible to imagine. The Undying Monster is a masterpiece of werewolf fiction by a largely forgotten writer of popular romance, mystery, and horror novels.

With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Jessie Douglas Kerruish’s The Undying Monster is a classic of English horror fiction reimagined for modern readers.

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Publié par	Mint Editions
Date de parution	02 mars 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781513277301
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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The Undying Monster
A Tale of the Fifth Dimension
Jessie Douglas Kerruish

The Undying Monster: A Tale of the Fifth Dimension was first published in 1922.
This edition published by Mint Editions 2021.
ISBN 9781513272306 | E-ISBN 9781513277301
Published by Mint Editions®
minteditionbooks.com
Publishing Director: Jennifer Newens
Design & Production: Rachel Lopez Metzger
Project Manager: Micaela Clark
Typesetting: Westchester Publishing Services

C ONTENTS B OOK I—S EARCH B Y THE S UPERSENSITIVE I. T O T HUNDERBARROW S HAW II. I N T HUNDERBARROW S HAW III. O LIVER H ALF R EMEMBERS IV. A W ITCH H UNT IN P ROSPECT V. S UEZ- W EST- O F- S UEZ VI. O F T HE V AMPIRE H AMMANDS VII. M ORE D IMENSIONS T HAN F OUR VIII. “A NOTHER D IMENSION —P OSSIBLY A F IFTH ” IX. “P ARDON FOR … 26,000 Y EARES AND 26 D AIES ” X. T HE H AND OF G LORY XI. R UNIC W RITING XII. “? ? ? ? ? ?: H AMMAND —” XIII. “O, C, G, Q, O, OR S, AND L, OR Z” XIV. T HE F IRST OF THE F OURTH E STATE XV. “A N E NTIRELY N EW C RIME —” B OOK II—T HE M OUND OF THE G OLDEN P IGTAILS I. T O S UMMON THE W ARLOCK II. L EWES M ARTYRS AND G OLDEN P IGTAILS III. A NCESTRAL A UTOBIOGRAPHY IV. “A ARON’S G OLDEN C ALF — IN S USSEX ” V. T O O PEN T HUNDER’S B ARROW VI. C HURCHYARD M OULD VII. G OLDEN C ALF AND D RAGON S HIP VIII. “T HE H IDDEN R OOM —T O-NIGHT —” IX. “I N THE N AMES OF THE A SA- G ODS —” X. “T HE E XPLANATION — IN A S INGLE W ORD ” XI. “L ET D OWN B Y THE G OLDEN P IGTAILS ” XII. T HE C LUE OF C LUES , 1520–1651 XIII. T HE C LUE OF C LURES , 1651–1920 XIV. “…? ? ? ? ? ?: H AMMAND : …” A GAIN B OOK III—T HE N IGHT OF T HREE T HOUSAND Y EARS I. T HE S PIRIT OF THE A GE T AKES A H AND II. T HE M ONSTER AT L ARGE III. I N THE F IFTH D IMENSION IV. O NE L OOSE L INK V. “B RONZE A GE TO J UDGEMENT D AY ” VI. T HE V OW OF S IGMUND THE V OLSUNG VII. J UDGEMENT D AY ON THE H ORIZON VIII. T HE H OUR OF T HREE T HOUSAND Y EARS IX. T HE L AST T WILIGHT — AND A FTER X. A N IGHT OF C LOUDLESS S TARS E NVOI

BOOK I
SEARCH BY THE SUPERSENSITIVE

I
T O T HUNDERBARROW S HAW
The end of the Fifty-two Months’ War left the family of Hammand of Dannow reduced to two members. The two had always been good pals, Oliver Hammand and Swanhild his sister, and now they were left alone the bond between them was intensified.
Swanhild told herself that as she waited on that winter night. It was to allay her growing nervousness that she dwelt on it. She fidgeted too much over Oliver, so she impressed on herself as she looked at the clock for the fifth time between 11–35 and midnight. It was not true, but it served to reassure her for several seconds. She really had cause for uneasiness, Oliver was out late: they kept the sort of hours at Dannow Old Manor that make Summer Time an injurious insult, and it was the kind of night against which the ancient family rhyme warned the Hammands of Dannow:
“Where grow pines and firs amain,
Under Stars, sans heat or rain,
Chief of Hammand, ’ware thy Bane! ”
Starlit, that is, and dry and cold. There was a breeze down in the Weald of Sussex, which meant that Dannow, up on the Downs, was in the track of half a gale. It was not a noisy wind, but the kind that suggests something very big and thin fresh from the horror of Infinite Space. Swanhild could not hear it distinctly, the Manor walls are a yard thick, only she felt it sweep round the building, and there is nothing more harrowing than a deadly hush with the feel of a great noise round it.
She waited in the Holbein Room, not the best place in the circumstances. Flanking the fireplace were the two dubious Holbeins, portraits of Godfrey Hammand and his wife: both killed by the Undying Monster of Dannow on a frosty night in 1556. Over the mantelpiece the little, black, Streete portrait of Godfrey’s father, Sir Magnus the Warlock, who committed suicide after surviving an encounter with the Monster on a frosty night of 1526. Swanhild saw all three whenever she consulted the clock, as only one lamp was lit, over the mantel, and they were enshrined in a little oasis of warmth and light in the vast spread of wainscoated room.
The rest of the apartment was all shifting shadows, Swanhild herself was the only bright and vivid feature of it when the fire had gone down to a sullen smoulder. She was a big woman of twenty, slimly but largely built, with aquiline features, big grey eyes, calm and wide-set, and a wonderful crown of glowing curls, every lock a separate shade of gold, from coppery to that pale tint that suggests warmed silver. She was a typical Hammand of Dannow, evidently a descendant of the Warlock Sir Magnus, for the portrait, the face outlined palely in a black wilderness of background and Tudor cap, and the features traced like rivers on a map, might have been a coarsened likeness of her.
Soon after midnight appeared Walton, the butler, with some trifling enquiry as transparent excuse for a little talk. His manner was one of nicely suppressed alarm.
“Mr. Oliver’s very late, Miss Swanhild,” he observed uneasily.
“We can trust him not to get into mischief, Walton.”
“It’s mischief getting at him I dread, Miss Swanhild. Those two Ades are likely to be about their tricks on a night like this.”
Swanhild laughed. “They’re only poachers, Walton.”
“You observed yourself, Miss Swanhild, that fellows who set traps that mauled the poor beasts would be capable of anything. The Ades were always a vengeful lot, a gipsy strain about them, you know, Miss Swanhild. And Charlie Ade owes Mr. Oliver one for that thrashing last month.”
“Strictly he owes me one. It was I who sent Oliver round directly I found the traps. Oliver would have been content with jailing him.”
“He swore, and so did young Bob, to do for Mr. Oliver when he was out of Lewes, Miss Swanhild.”
“Just so, hence my confidence, Walton. They wouldn’t dare to do anything after saying it.”
“Well, Miss Swanhild, there’s no knowing.” He hesitated. “As Mr. Oliver went to Lower Dannow it’s to be hoped he won’t take the short cut back by the Shaw—”
As he was voicing her own unconfessed fear Swanhild was curt. “Don’t worry about the Monster,” she advised. “Why, it hasn’t been about for forty years.”
“There’s no timing it, Miss Swanhild. Once it was quiet a hundred and twenty years, and then it came up worse than ever—” He glanced involuntarily at the Warlock portrait.
The girl shuddered and abandoned her pretence of indifference. “If one only knew beforehand when it was going to manifest itself!” she sighed.
“If you knew when to expect it, Miss Swanhild, might I venture to ask what you would do?”
“Call in—Oh, Doyle, or Professor Lodge, or Miss Bartendale.”
“Miss Bartendale, Miss Swanhild? I do not seem to recognise the name. May I ask if we have ever entertained the lady?”
“No, I only know her by reputation. She is the greatest hand at hunting down ghosts and anything supernatural that ever was known. She appears to combine the functions of a White Witch and detective.”
Walton shook his head. “It was before your time, Miss Swanhild, but I remember Madame Blavatsky and Professor Crookes coming down after your grandfather’s death and failing to find out anything. I doubt, with all respect to your opinion, if this lady, or anyone, could do anything with our Monster.”
Swanhild laughed again. “I believe you would be half sorry if anyone could, Walton! It would lower the prestige of the family to lose its old-established Ghost, eh? A supernatural Bane and Luck combined that has gone on for a thousand years at least—”
She stopped suddenly. The door was ajar and from the hall came the noise of the telephone bell. Both the girl and the old man were unreasonably startled. Walton hurried out, and Swanhild followed him after a moment’s pause. The hall was poorly lit, at the further end of it the maid who had been sitting up pending the master’s return was at the telephone.
She turned and across the dusk of the long apartment her face shewed with the uncanny luminosity of live flesh in a dim distance. Through the hush her voice came in almost a shriek.
“Oh, Mr. Walton—Miss Hammand. They’ve rung us up from the Lodge—the Monster’s in the Shaw—Will heard it howl.—And Mr. Hammand isn’t home yet!”
As she ran the length of the hall Swanhild’s heart seemed to miss one beat and then she was suddenly very calm. She must be calm, for Oliver’s sake. “Hullo, hullo!” came the voice of the Lodge-keeper’s son as she took the receiver from the frightened maid. “Why don’t you call Miss Hammand?”
“It’s Miss Hammand. Steady, Will. What’s up?”
“ ‘The Monster’s in the Shaw, miss. I heard on en. Killin’ Mus’ Hammand, most like. I heard on en a mile away. Horrible, it were, like a dog an’ a devil to onct!”
“How do you know it’s the Monster? It might be a trapped dog.”
“Miss, I heard en! I were comin’ home from Lower Dannow, after gettin’ a bottle for Father from the Doctor, and on the bridge I heard en. Like a bark, an’ a voice, an’ a woman in ’sterics all together! Wind bein’ from the Shaw, miss, an’ it carryin’ all the way to the bridge! It warn’t no dog.”
“Very well, stand ready with a lantern to open the gates when you see a car coming.”
Three violent applications to the house telephone brought the voice of the chauffeur, scared and sleepy. “’lo! Wha’s ‘time o’ night?” it demanded.
“It’s Miss Hammand. Run the Maxwell round Stredwick. As quick as you can.”
She ran upstairs and came down within three minutes, buckling her brother’s service revolver on round her motor coat. Walton and the maid, the only servants up at the time, still stood by the telephone, as though paralyzed. “Miss Swan, surely you’re not going to the Shaw?” the old man exclaimed.
The horror in his eyes brought home to Swanhild the incredible possibilities of the crisis. As a youth he had seen her own grandfather, Reginald Hammand, brought home from the Shaw after such an a