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THE HOUSE OF FEAR · The Jailer of Souls

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  Chapter eleven of The Jailer of Souls by Hamilton Craigie. This LibriVox recording is
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  in the public domain. Read by yoganand The Jailer of Souls, Chapter eleven.
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  The House of Fear, a house of silence, broken at times by
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  a weird wailing, as if from the pit, a house of dreams,
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  gray in the moonlight, under the leprous, silvered finger of the moon,
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  brooding now a grim, gray fortress of the damned, the stronghold of the
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  beast. Dense pines grew about it, so that when the wind wailed among
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  them, like the wailing of a lost soul, it met and mingled with
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  an eerie ellulation, rising as if muffled by many thicknesses of walls, to
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  end after a little with a quick shriek and a sudden hush, with,
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  after a moment, the faint echo of a taunting laugh. That laugh would
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  have struck terror to the swat soul of a lucivee, if lucivies have sol
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  For it was like an eldrich howling, faint and thin, like the thin,
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  tinkling laughter of a fiend, without pity and without ruth. Here in
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  the sanitarium of doctor Elphinston. There were secrets within secrets, wallts within wolts
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  downward, as in Dante's Seventh Hell, And from this monastery of the hopeless
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  they penetrated, on occasion outward from its battlemented wallts and wild frantic laughter.
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  But there was nothing demoniac about it, because it was a laughter of the
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  insane. But that other laughter, like a sound heard in dreams, passes
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  by. If there were any such hearing, it would shudder and pass on.
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  For the secret of that house of doom was a secret, terrible and
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  grim, a secret for him who might have guessed at it, to be
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  whispered behind locked doors and with hated breath. And there had been those who
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  had whispered of the lost souls within those walls. And the whisper ran that
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  they were indeed mad men, who had not been always mad, because they
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  had become such after their commitment to the bleak house within the wood. These
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  were but whispers merely, for the power upon that house was not alone,
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  the power of evil, rising like the dark tide among the pines. For
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  in Dryborne and beyond it, in Palos Verde and Mohave, it was rumored
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  that the strong arm of the law upheld it, or such law say as
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  might have issued from the devious hand of Hamilton Drooke. Once and it was
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  never repeated. A man had come there from the Capital. He had demanded
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  to see the doctor's patience that had been a long time in the past.
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  And as the investigator had stood there, viewing with a faint, creeping horror,
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  the nondescripts s paraded before him, gibbering, melting in an inartic late
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  furious babble, a man had burst suddenly from the line with a strangled cry,
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  Jerry, don't you know me? I'm Humiston new Bold. The voice
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  had been the voice of Humiston, but the face it had been the face
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  of another, totally unlike. There had been no possible resemblance that the man
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  had been sane. The investigator was persuaded of that suffering under a peculiar delusion.
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  Indeed, but sane. The man had rushed forward, then, baring
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  his arm, and there on the thin, pitiful flush that had once been
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  healthy and hard, there ran a curious design and red. The investigator sucked
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  in his breath as that tell tale birthmark sprang livid unrisk case, for he
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  had seen it before. The doctor's eyes had narrowed to slits. Somehow the
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  man from the capital had gained the impression that it was the first time that
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  he had seen that mark. But the investigator could do nothing. Birthmarks can
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  be duplicated. He had waited. Then, in a curious indecision, as
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  the bearded doctor had interposed to swore, well, of course, commissioner,
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  you're quite aware, or you should be. How it is these paranoiacs had
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  noted for the delusions ah magalosephalic tendencies, I should say, they believed themselves
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  to be someone else, always a bank president, say, a famous actor,
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  an author, a great general. Now, mister Humiston, you knew
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  him, I believe. Beneath the silken tone there ran suddenly a hint of
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  iron, of menace veiled but actual. The investigator felt it. This patient
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  knew your name. Of course, the sore voice had continued, poor fellow,
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  you must be gentle with him. And there the matter had ended.
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  Curiously enough, the man who had claimed to be banker Humiston had, after
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  that first burst of friends, each speech, kept silent. Perhaps that modern
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  gleaming in the doctor's eyes had telegraphed of warning, a message, a command.
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  But the investigator went home, oddly shaken to dream like Pilot's wife,
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  of a white face with staring eyes, which changed even as he gazed into
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  the face of his friend new Bold humistone to hear, even in his dream,
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  a voice, and it was the voice of the living and of the
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  dead. In a bass sell six feet by six a cubicle in which there
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  was barely sufficient headroom for a tall man to stand upright, a figure stood
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  with his hands clenched upon the bars, staring outward at the grim wood visible
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  to the south. Travis Anist had abode here in this living tomb three weeks
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  now three centuries, in which, as in a nightmare of cold horror,
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  he had been away merely off a face three pointed, bearded, the eyes
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  active with a malign intelligence, the lips smiling always with the coold smile of
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  death. Twice a day, the small panel in the cell door had slid
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  backward without sound, to frame in the opening the face of doctor Elphinstone,
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  like a face without a body and without a soul. The father of Black
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  Steve Anister knew that it was not a dream that would pass, because on
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  the second day the head had spoken. Travis Anister was scarcely a coward.
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  He had fought like a baited grisly when surprised in his summer camp by the
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  men who had brought him under cover of the night to this prison house beyond
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  the pale. Now at the voice, like the slip old rip of an
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  acid, Anister stared straight before him with the gaze of a man who has
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  abandoned hope, My dear mister Anister, the voice had whispered the little matter
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  of the check, If you please, you'll make it out to cash.
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  Ah, that's good, I perceive you are vise. It had not been
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  the pistol in the lean claw like hand, nor the eyes even brooding upon
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  him with the impersonal cold staring of a cobra. Travis and his termit have
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  refused if it had not been for those sounds that he had heard, the
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  sights that he had seen when taken at midnight from his cubicle, he had
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  beheld the administration of the cone, and, like Macbeth, with that one
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  side and the sight of that which came after, he had supped full of
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  horrors until now, at the bidding of the toneless voice. He had obeyed
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  three times thereafter, at the command of his dark jailor, he had paid
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  tribute. Nor had he been of all this lost battalion, the single victim.
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  There had been others. Now separated from him, scarce a dozen feet
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  A girl with golden hair sat huddled eyes in a sightless staring upon the stone
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  floor of her cell. Clear ridgely had not been killed. She had been
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  saved for a fate beside which death would be a little thing, a fate
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  unspeakable, even as had number thirty three. Mary Allerton, removed from the
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  others by a narrow corridor running crosswise in the cell block, watched and waited
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  now for the signal of the man to whom she had despatched that message.
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  It seemed a century in the past. That morning they had found the rope.
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  They had removed it without comment, while the ophidian gaze of the dark
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  doctor had been bent upon her with what she fancied had been a queer,
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  speculative look, a look of anticipation and of something more. So far,
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  she had been treated decently enough. Her cell was wide and airy, plainly
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  but comfortably furnished. But as to that look in the gray green eyes of
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  the master of black magic. She was not so sure. There came a
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  sudden movement in the corridor, without a panting, a snuffling, and the
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  quick pad pad of marching feet. Mary, her eye to the keyhole of
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  that door, could see, but dimly she made out, merely the sheeted
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  figures, like grim gliding ghosts, the figure rigid on the stretcher, moving
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  silently on its rubber tired wheels, then at an order, stealing inward through
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  the keyhole. She recoiled. That perfume had been sickish, sweet, overpowering,
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  tense and yet sharp, with the faint acrid sweetness the odor of ether.
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  And then, although she could not see it, a man in the
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  next cell had risen, white faced from his coat to sink back limply as
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  a dark hand holding that inverted corn had swept onward to his face, a
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  choked gurgle, a strangled, sharp cry, penetrating outward in a vague shadow
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  of clamor, and then silence, with a faint whisper of the wind among
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  the pines, the brool of the rushing river, the faint, half audible
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  footfalls passing and repassing in the corridor of the dead. His aniester sprang to
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  his sweet as the narrow door swung open to press backward against the window barts.
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  As the High Priest of Horror, followed by his familiars, cold and
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  hooded, entered with a slow, silent step. The doctor spoke, and
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  his voice was like a chill wind. My friend, I bring you forgetfulness,
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  a brief lot of ass and then ah, then you'll be a new
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  man, a man reborn, my friend. Now anestor, his face gray
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  with a sort of hideous strain, stared silent, white lipped as at a
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  low voiced order. The attendants came forward. The lean hand reached forward,
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  It poised, darted, swooped, and it was the cone. The end
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  of chapter eleven,