Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James Read Online Free PDF

centered there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers, surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted, and his eyeballs startingfrom his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the King. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified. They seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.
    I entirely despair of conveying by any words the impression which this figure makes upon anyone who looks at it. I recollect once showing the photograph of the drawing to a lecturer on morphology—a person of, I was going to say, abnormally sane and unimaginative habits of mind. He absolutely refused to be alone for the rest of that evening, and he told me afterward that for many nights he had not dared to put out his light before going to sleep.
    However, the main traits of the figure I can at least indicate. At first you saw only a mass of coarse, matted black hair. Presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness, almost a skeleton, but with the muscles standing out like wires. 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 this 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.
    At last the question was asked, “Is this book for sale?”
    There was the same hesitation, the same plunge of determination that he had noticed before, and then came the welcome answer.
    “If
monsieur
pleases.”
    “How much do you ask for it?”
    “I will take two hundred and fifty francs.”
    This was confounding. Even a collector’s conscience is sometimes stirred, and Dennistoun’s conscience was tenderer than a collector’s.
    “My good man!” he said again and again, “your book is worth far more than two hundred and fifty francs, I assure you—far more.”
    But the answer did not vary: “I will take two hundred and fifty francs, not more.”
    There was really no possibility of refusing such a chance. The money was paid, the receipt signed, a glass of wine drunk over the transaction, and then the sacristan seemed to become a new man. He stood upright, he ceased to throw those suspicious glances behind him, he actually laughed or tried to laugh.
    Dennistoun rose to go.
    “I shall have the honor of accompanying
monsieur
to his hotel?” said the sacristan.
    “Oh no, thanks! It isn’t a hundred yards. I know the way perfectly, and there is a moon.”
    The offer was pressed three or four times, and refused as often.
    “Then,
monsieur
will summon me if—if he finds occasion. He will keep the middle of the road, the sides are so rough.”
    “Certainly, certainly,” said Dennistoun, who was impatient to examine his prize by himself, and he stepped out into the passage with his book under his arm.
    Here he was met by the daughter. She, it appeared, was anxious to do a little business on her own account—perhaps, like Gehazi, to “take somewhat” from the foreigner whom her father had spared.
    “A silver crucifix and chain for the neck.
Monsieur
would perhaps be good enough to accept it?”
    Well, really, Dennistoun hadn’t much use for these things. What