The Smell by Francis Flagg Page 2
One, by the Alpha and Omega, by the Might
‘For God’s sake,’ he cried, ‘what’s the matter of The Eternal Monad—back!’ I commanded.
here?’
“But I did not answer. For staring
“I FELT it go from myself, but not from
down on the face of Mason on which was
Mason. Still his body writhed and twisted with frozen a look of such stark horror that it voluptuous ecstasy. His face radiated congealed the blood in my veins, I realized unhuman lust and joy, and his hands, his that I had dragged him from the accursed hands.... With a feeling of unutterable horror I room a second too late.
realized that he was beyond the protection of
“He had seen!”
any magic I could invoke to save him.
“‘Oh,’ he crooned, with that smoothing
THE doctor stared at his listeners. “Yes, he gesture. ‘Oh, oh, oh.’ He went on like that, was dead. Heart failure, they called it. ‘That mumbling occasionally, ‘The feel of your expression on his face,’ said the landlady with skin, the fragrance of it. Closer, beloved, a shudder; ‘it is like the look on the face of the closer. Whisper, whisper....’
girl who died there two years ago.’
“And then in a thrilling undertone that
“‘For God’s sake, woman,’ I cried,
made my scalp prickle on my head, he said, ‘I
‘tear that room to pieces! Board it up, lock it have felt you, heard you. Let me see you, let away! Never let anyone sleep there again!’
me see you.’
“Later,
I
learned
that in the great
explosion of 1917, the house was destroyed by
“BUT he must not see! I knew that. I must fire!
drag him beyond the room before he could
“And now,” said the doctor, sucking at
see. With both hands I seized his body. Only I his cold pipe, “what about a natural
seemed to be dragging not only his body but explanation? Is the weird occurrence I have another that clung to it, resisted my efforts, related open to one? In a sense, nothing can be disputed every inch of the way to the door.
unnatural, and yet ... yet....” He tapped the My senses reeled; once again the smell poured bowl of his pipe on the ash-tray “For twenty in on me like an invisible fog.
years I have studied, pondered, dipped into the
“Fear, blind, corroding fear had me in
almost forgotten lore of ancient mysteries, of its grip. Like a man in a nightmare I struggled.
the truth behind the fable, and sometimes I Would I never reach the door? The invisible think, I believe ... that there are stranger things antagonist tugged, pulled. Three feet to go; in heaven and earth....” He paused. “Long ago two; one. With a last desperate effort I crashed primitive man was an animal and his sense of against the door with the full weight of my smell must have been highly developed.
body. Fortunately the door opened outwardly Perhaps through it he cognized another world;
The Smell
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a world of subtle sounds and sights; a world (and in a lesser degree, myself) to exercise a just as concrete and real as the one we know; faculty the human race, thank God, has long an inimical world. The ‘garden,’ perhaps, and ago outgrown. Perhaps—”
the devil in the garden.” He laughed But at sight of his listeners’ faces the strangely.
doctor came to an abrupt stop.
“Perhaps certain odors generated in
“Ah,” he said; “but I see that this
that room; perhaps the invisible presence there explanation is not natural! ”
of something alien, incredible, caused Mason
Monte Herridge, The Smell by Francis Flagg
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