The Hexer from Salem - Satan's Books E-Book

Wolfgang Hohlbein

• Herausgeber: Bastei Entertainment
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: An Occult Fantasy Series
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Seitenzahl: 133

Beschreibung

The light of the oil lamp cast flickering patterns on the walls, creating a sense of life where there was none. The air was musty and the floor under the two men's feet was strewn with trash and fine shards of glass. A spider web wafted in the wind like a gray curtain, and eerie rattling noises came up from the bowels of the building. They were the sounds of heavy, labored breathing; at least that's how Tremayn's over-wrought imagination heard them.
He stood still. The lamp in his hand was trembling, and he had to try with all his might to fight the growing urge to turn and run as fast and as far away as he could from this cursed, sinister house. It seemed more like a giant, damp grave with each passing moment ...

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

What is The Hexer from Salem?

The Author

Title

Copyright

Satan’s Books

Preview

What is The Hexer from Salem?

The Hexer from Salem, a novel series in the vein of H.P. Lovecraft, was created and written almost entirely by Wolfgang Hohlbein. The epic began in 1984 in a pulp-fiction series: Ghost-Thrillers from Bastei Publishing and later as a stand-alone series under The Hexer from Salem, before it finally became available in paperback and collectors editions.

The story takes place primarily in nineteenth century London, following the chilling adventures of The Hexer, Robert Craven and, later on, his son as they encounter the Great Aged — godlike creatures hostile to humans — and their representatives on earth.

The Author

Wolfgang Hohlbein is a phenomenon: With more than 200 books selling over 40 million copies worldwide, he is one of Germany’s most prolific fantasy writers. Hohlbein is well-known for his young adult books and above all his novel series, The Hexer from Salem.

Wolfgang Hohlbein

Episode 6: Satan’s Books

Translated by William Glucroft

BASTEI ENTERTAINMENT

Digital original edition

Bastei Entertainment is an imprint of Bastei Lübbe AG

Copyright © 2016 by Bastei Lübbe AG, Schanzenstraße 6-20, 51063 Cologne, Germany

Written by Wolfgang Hohlbein

Translation by William Glucroft

Cover design by Thomas Krämer

Cover illustration © shutterstock/creaPicTures

eBook production: Urban SatzKonzept, Düsseldorf

ISBN 978-3-73251-357-4

www.bastei-entertainment.com

Satan’s Books

The light of the oil lamp cast flickering patterns on the walls, creating a sense of life where there was none. The air was musty and the floor under the two men’s feet was strewn with trash and fine shards of glass. A spider web wafted in the wind like a gray curtain, and eerie rattling noises came up from the bowels of the building. They were the sounds of heavy, labored breathing; at least that’s what Tremayn’s over-wrought imagination believed.

He stood still. The lamp in his hand trembled, and he had to try with all his might to fight the growing urge to turn and run. To run as fast and as far away as he could from this cursed, sinister house that seemed more like a giant, damp grave with each passing moment …

“What’s going on with you?” Gordon asked. “Scared?”

Tremayn turned to the man two heads taller than him, ready with a sharp response, but gave a crooked grin instead, then continued on with the lamp held out in front of him, like a weapon. The tremor in Gordon’s own voice was audible. His mocking question was nothing more than a feeble attempt to mask his own fear. Tremayn was scared, sure, but Gordon was too, at least as much, if not more. It had been a stupid idea to come here, alone and unarmed, but neither was prepared to be the first to admit how afraid he was. So they kept on going, against their better judgment.

The flickering yellow light of the lamp revealed a door, and the draft that had accompanied them into the house kicked up thin veils of dust. Tremayn forced down the urge to cough. His heart was racing. It was cold now that the sun had set, taking its barely-warming rays with it. Nevertheless, Tremayn was soaked in sweat.

Gordon motioned forward with a silent nod of his head and Tremayn lifted the lamp a bit higher to make out more of their surroundings. The flame flickered briefly, almost as if it were shrinking away from the encroaching shadows — or something hidden within them. He pushed those thoughts away and squinted intently into the yellow-grayish twilight to see more clearly whatever it was Gordon wanted him to notice.

The door was ajar, and something gray and wet was shimmering along its lower edge …

Tremayn fought against the nausea rising in his throat, crouched, and leaned forward. The foot of the door was coated in a thin, moist crust, and Tremayn could now see a trail where something had been dragged, almost half a meter wide, cutting through the dust and dirt, extending from the door and leading off beyond it.

Involuntarily, he thought of the trail that had led them here. It was a wide path, smooth, almost as though something heavy had been pulled along it, leading through the woods to the dilapidated house. Even there he had noticed the occasional small puddle of this same gray substance: a kind of slime, as though a giant snail had crawled along the underbrush, absorbing everything in its path. The sinking feeling in his stomach grew stronger.

With a jerk he stood up and looked at Gordon. “Let’s get out of here,” he said. “I don’t like this at all.”

Again, Gordon tried to laugh, but his voice trembled so much that he gave up after a few seconds. He reached into his bag, rummaged around, and dramatically pulled his hand out a moment later, his fingers gripping a switchblade.

“Afraid?” he asked. “Maybe there’s a monster waiting for us up there.” He bristled with belligerent energy, shoved the knife into Tremayn’s hand, and kicked the door open. The hallway beyond it extended just a few more steps, ending at the bottom of a rotting wooden staircase that disappeared into the darkness above.

“Let’s go already, coward,” he growled. “There’s nothing up there. Just a few spiders and bats, maybe.”

Tremayn swallowed the response that almost escaped his lips and looked back once more before following him in. The worn-out stairs creaked audibly under their weight as they climbed them together. The house was full of sounds, as old abandoned houses often are, and the musty smell that Tremayn had already detected was now stronger.

Gordon stopped when they reached another door. This one was also ajar and covered in the gray, shimmering substance.

Tremayn wrinkled his nose when Gordon pushed the door open and a truly breathtaking stench washed over them.

They were in the attic. The room before them was long and dark, a tangle of half-rotten beams and dusty cobwebs. Parts of the roof were caved in, allowing brief glimpses of the velvety blue night sky. The sounds from the forest outside mingled with the creaking and groaning of the house.

Gordon tapped him on the shoulder and motioned to the left. The attic wasn’t empty. A large, imposing desk stood in the middle of the room, covered in thick layers of dust and coated in black dirt. On it stood two old oil lamps, emitting a flickering red-yellow light. Behind the desk sat a man.

Tremayn swallowed hard to clear the bitter knot that was suddenly in his throat. For a fraction of a second, he was sure the man was dead. Then he realized that wasn’t the case. The man was sitting unnaturally stiff in a high-backed, carved chair, his eyes open wide and fixed, and dust had settled into the sunken areas of his face. He never blinked. Lying before him was an enormous, dark-gray book bound in hardened pig leather. It was open and, despite the poor light and distance, Treyman noticed that it was covered in strange characters.

“My God,” he murmured. “What …” He gasped, lurched back, and grabbed Gordon’s arm so tightly it made him groan in pain.

“He’s dead!” he said. “My God, he’s …”

Gordon shook his arm free and took a half-step away.

“The … the guy is dead!” Tremayn stammered again. His voice shook and was close to giving out.

“I can see that,” Gordon snapped. “For a while, too.” He chuckled, covering up his own fright. “He can’t do any harm to you anymore, coward. Let’s go.” He took a step forward and waited for Tremayn to follow, but Tremayn stayed frozen in place. Sweat glinted on his forehead.

“What’s wrong with you?” Gordon asked. “Afraid of a dead man?”

Tremayn shook his head, looking uncertainly at Gordon for a moment before nodding. “I don’t like this,” he said. “Let’s get out of here. There’s … nothing here for us anyway.”

Gordon raised an eyebrow. “How do you know that?” he asked. “We can at least have a look around, don’t you think?” He shook his head dismissively and with a decisive gesture, kept Tremayn from protesting further. He turned around and approached the desk and the dead man, albeit with less certainty and confidence than he would have liked.

Tremayn swallowed nervously, standing on one foot then the other, indecisively. That’s when he realized he was still holding Gordon’s knife. Embarrassed, he quickly closed the blade and put the knife away, then took a hesitant step forward, only to immediately hold back once more. “Let’s go,” he said again. “Please.”

Gordon ignored him.

But even Gordon’s steps were growing more cautious, and he could feel his unease gradually turning to pure terror. The attic’s darkness seemed to come alive, rustling and whispering, as they neared the desk and the dead figure. Gordon also noticed that the two lamps to the left and right of the body emitted much less light than normal lamps. The desk was in the center of an island of hazy, flickering illumination, encircled by the surrounding blackness and strange, billowing shadows. Something about the dead man’s face terrified Gordon. It was something familiar and repulsive, but he couldn’t say what. The bitter knot in his throat was still there, and his stomach clenched into a hard, painful ball. He pondered momentarily who could have lit those lamps and why, but the thought left him, before he could really consider it.

They came to within just two steps of the desk. Gordon tried unsuccessfully to steal a glimpse at the open book. Something peculiar happened: He could see that the writing was strange — not really human writing, perhaps more like the scribbling of a child, yet at the same time it had a regularity that was hard to grasp. But Gordon just couldn’t seem to see the lines more clearly. Every time he tried to focus on one of the hieroglyphs, it mysteriously disappaered.

He struggled to turn his attention from the book to the man. Tremayn only barely kept himself from screaming aloud.

The eyes of the stranger were wide open, still fixed, and Tremayn realized, upon closer examination, the gray layer on his skin was neither from sickness nor poor light, but dust. It was even on his pupils.

“What …” Gordon gasped.

He said nothing further. The stranger moved. Dust trickled from his clothing and Gordon saw that between his fingers were delicate spider webs which, now that he was moving, were tearing apart. The man’s upper body tipped very slowly forward and for a brief, terrible moment, hung motionless as if attached to invisible strings, and then finally slammed against the desk. The sound was like one of the wood beams crashing to the floor.

“My … my God!” Tremayn stammered. “What … is this? What’s going on here? I … want to go!”

“Just another moment,” Gordon said. He quickly lifted his hand to hold Tremayn back. “Help me.”

Tremayn croaked, his eyes full of fear. “What … are you going to do?” he asked.

Gordon pointed to the book lying open in front of the dead man. The man had landed on the book when he collapsed; his right hand lay, clenched in a claw, on the open page. “I want to take that thing with us,” he said. “Help me.”

Tremayn stumbled back in shock. “You’re crazy! I’m not touching that guy!”

Gordon looked at him angrily for a moment. “You afraid he’ll bite?” he asked scornfully. But his sneering had no effect on Tremayn, who just stubbornly shook his head.

“I’m not touching that guy,” he said firmly. “Think of me as you want, but I’m not doing it.”

Gordon swallowed a curse and pushed down the feeling of disgust and loathing rising within him then tried lifting the dead man’s head. The man was surprisingly heavy, and his skin felt cold and as hard as wood. But he managed.

“At least take the book,” he said. “I’ll hold him.”

Tremayn did as he was told and reached for the book, but stopped. “What do you want with it, anyway?” he asked.

“Jesus, the thing is ancient,” Gordon snapped. “It could be worth a fortune. So do it!”

Tremayn swallowed nervously a few times, overcame his fear, and quickly jerked the book out from under the dead man. The corpse’s frozen hand seemed to want to hold onto it, as if still trying to protect it. Its fingernails slid along the pages with a sound like steel scraping glass. Gordon shuddered, hastily dropped the corpse and jumped back.

“Now go,” he said. “Quickly.”

Gordon took the book, holding it under his arm, and ran to the door without another word. Tremayn also sprang for the exit, though he stopped and looked back at the corpse. He was sure he had seen the man before. Despite how gruesomely the face had been frozen and distorted, it was somehow familiar …

He chased away that thought, spun around, and plunged down the stairs behind Gordon.

Had he stayed just a moment longer, he would have seen the dead man slowly, with stiff, puppet-like motions, sit back up. And had he gone around the desk, he may have seen that the man was neither dead nor really human — at least not from the waist down.

From the top of his head down to his navel, his body was completely human. But beneath was a gray, pulsing form, like a mountain of quivering slime that trickled down the seat of the chair sending out thin, shimmering rivulets to wrap around the legs of the desk …

“It makes no difference to me what you call it,” I said impatiently. “It was a defeat. And if these books are even half as dangerous as you claim then …” I stopped. Howard had been listening to me for the better part of an hour, and his only reaction so far had been to continue lighting another of his thin, black cigars, filling the cabin’s air with clouds of foul, bluish smoke. I had begun to feel not only helpless, but also patronized. There’s nothing more frustrating than having your anger repeatedly bounce off the person you’re directing it at. I balled my fists in pointless anger, stared at Howard with as much disdain as I could muster, and then turned away from him with a huff. I would have preferred to storm off, but a fifteen-yard-long boat doesn’t really afford the space for such a dramatic exit, and it’s just laughable when you come back two minutes later, your teeth chattering from the cold. So I stayed where I was.

Howard looked at me for several seconds through the smoke clouds he had created like a wall between us. He sighed loudly and put out his cigar in the nearby ashtray. “Feel better now?” he asked softly. “I mean, you’ve said what you wanted to say. Are you feeling relieved?”

He was not quite successful in banishing the mocking undertone from his words, and this time it was me who gave him nothing but a dark look in reply. Of course I had said what I wanted to say — fifty times over. It was the answer I was waiting for.

“You act like it’s the most normal thing in the world if we …”

“Not at all,” Howard interrupted and lit another cigar. “It’s just that we get nowhere running around like headless chickens, Robert. We can only wait.”

“Wait?” I snapped. “For what?”

“For the other side to make a mistake,” he answered, then added with a sudden smile, “You know, you’re very much like your father when you’re angry. He was just as fiery when he was your age.”

“Don’t change the subject,” I growled. “Damn it, Howard, I’m sick of sitting around in this boat, just waiting for the earth to open up and swallow us.”

“Or, rather, the sea,” Howard answered. “If anything. But that won’t happen, don’t you worry. Yog-Sothoth got what he wanted. I don’t think he’s still anywhere nearby. If he was, we’d probably be long dead.” That last bit he added in a quieter tone he hadn’t used in a while.