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(Book titles are subject to change)

A Royal Engineer in the Low Countries

A Cavalry Surgeon at Waterloo

With the Third Guards during the Peninsular War

The First and Last Campaigns of the Great War

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Vincent O'Sullivan

Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Algernon Blackwood

Narratives of the Anglo-Zulu War

and many others

The Third Leonaur Book of Great Ghost and Horror Stories: Sixteen Spine Chilling and Strange Tales Including ‘The Last Lords of Gardonal’, ‘The Ship That Saw a Ghost’, ‘The Temple’, ‘A Strange Goldfield’, and ‘When I Was Dead’

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The Third Leonaur Book of Great Ghost and Horror Stories: Sixteen Spine Chilling and Strange Tales Including ‘The Last Lords of Gardonal’, ‘The Ship That Saw a Ghost’, ‘The Temple’, ‘A Strange Goldfield’, and ‘When I Was Dead’
Leonaur Original
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Author(s): Eunice Hetherington (editor)
Date Published: 2021/05
Page Count: 260
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-78282-895-2
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-78282-894-5

More exceptional tales to thrill and chill ghost story enthusiasts

Anthologies of short fiction, irrespective of their theme, are perennially popular and have many devotees. It follows that collections of ghost and horror stories have a receptive audience, combining, as they do, two compatible genres in one intriguing package. The success of an anthology is dependent, to a large extent, on its underlying concept. For The Third Leonaur Book of Ghost and Horror Stories, Eunice Hetherington has selected not only excellent tales that will chill the blood, but authors who may not be over familiar to aficionados. Many of the authors included here did not write sufficient stories to fill a volume dedicated only to their work. Here are little-known tales from the 'golden age' of strange and weird fiction by Horacio Quiroga, William Gilbert, Vincent James O'Sullivan, Hume Nesbit and several others.

Leonaur editions are newly typeset and are not facsimiles; each title is available in softcover and hardback with dustjacket.

Almost immediately there was a knock upon the door, and the housekeeper was in the doorway, with an agitated expression, demanding to see me. Sir William was looking out of the window, and fortunately did not see her.
“Please come to Miss Bosanquet, Sir,” she cried, very scared. “Please come at once.”
In alarm I hastily ran down the corridor and entered Warrington’s room. The girl was lying upon the bed, her hair flowing upon the pillow; her eyes, wide open and filled with terror, stared at the ceiling, and her hands clutched and twined in the coverlet as if in an agony of pain. A gasping sound issued from her, as though she were struggling for breath under suffocation. Her whole appearance was as of one in the murderous grasp of an assailant.
I bent over. “Throw the light, quick,” I called to Mrs Batty; and as I put my hand on her shoulder to lift her, the creature that lived in the chamber rose suddenly from the shadow upon the further side of the bed, and sailed with a flapping noise up to the cornice. With an exclamation of horror, I pulled the girl’s head forward, and the candle-light glowed on her pallid face. Upon the soft flesh of the slender throat was a round red mark, the size of a florin.
At the sight I almost let her fall upon the pillow again; but, commanding my nerves, I put my arms round her, and, lifting her bodily from the bed, carried her from the room. Mrs Batty followed.
“What shall we do?” she asked, in a low voice.
“Take her away from this damned chamber!” I cried. “Anywhere—the hall, the kitchen rather.”
I laid my burden upon a sofa in the dining-room, and despatching Mrs Batty for the brandy, gave Miss Bosanquet a draught. Slowly the horror faded from her eyes; they closed, and then she looked at me.
“What have you?—where am I?” she asked.
“You have been unwell,” I said. “Pray don’t disturb yourself yet.”
She shuddered, and closed her eyes again.
Very little more was said. Sir William pressed for his horses, and as the sky was clearing, I made no attempt to detain him, more particularly as the sooner Miss Bosanquet left the abbey the better for herself. In half an hour she recovered sufficiently to go, and I helped her into the carriage. She never referred to her seizure, but thanked me for my kindness. That was all. No one asked after Warrington—not even Sir William. He had forgotten everything, save his anxiety to get back. As the carriage turned from the steps, I saw the mark upon the girl’s throat, now grown fainter.
I waited up till late into the morning, but there was no sign of Warrington when I went to bed.
Nor had he made his appearance when I descended to breakfast. A letter in his handwriting, however, and with the London postmark, awaited me. It was a pitiful scrawl, in the very penmanship of which one might trace the desperate emotions by which he was torn. He implored my forgiveness. “Am I a devil?” he asked. “Am I mad? It was not I! It was not I!” he repeated, underlining the sentence with impetuous dashes. “You know,” he wrote; “and you know, therefore, that everything is at an end for me. I am going abroad today. I shall never see the abbey again.”
It was well that he had gone, as I hardly think that I could have faced him; and yet I was loth myself to leave the matter in this horrible tangle. I felt that it was enjoined upon me to meet the problems, and I endeavoured to do so as best I might. Mrs Batty gave me news of the girl Alice.
It was bad enough, though not so bad as both of us had feared. I was able to make arrangements on the instant, which I hoped might bury that lamentable affair for the time. There remained Miss Bosanquet; but that difficulty seemed beyond me. I could see no avenue out of the tragedy. I heard nothing save that she was ill—an illness attributed upon all hands to the shock of exposure to the thunderstorm. Only I knew better, and a vague disinclination to fly from the responsibilities of the position kept me hanging on at Utterbourne.
It was in those days before my visit to St Pharamond that I turned my attention more particularly to the thing which had forced itself relentlessly upon me. I was never a superstitious man; the gossip of old wives interested me merely as a curious and unsympathetic observer.
And yet I was vaguely discomfited by the transaction in the abbey, and it was with some reluctance that I decided to make a further test of Warrington’s bedroom. Mrs Batty received my determination to change my room easily enough, but with a protest as to the dampness of the Stone Chamber. It was plain that her suspicions had not marched with mine. On the second night after Warrington’s departure I occupied the room for the first time.
I lay awake for a couple of hours, with a reading lamp by my bed, and a volume of travels in my hand, and then, feeling very tired, put out the light and went to sleep. Nothing distracted me that night; indeed, I slept more soundly and peaceably than before in that house. I rose, too, experiencing quite an exhilaration, and it was not until I was dressing before the glass that I remembered the circumstances of my mission; but then I was at once pulled up, startled swiftly out of my cheerful temper.
Faintly visible upon my throat was the same round mark which I had already seen stamped upon Warrington and Miss Bosanquet. With that, all my former doubts returned in force, augmented and militant. My mind recurred to the bat, and tales of bloodsucking by those evil creatures revived in my memory. But when I had remembered that these were of foreign beasts, and that I was in England, I dismissed them lightly enough. Still, the impress of that mark remained, and alarmed me. It could not come by accident; to suppose so manifold a coincidence was absurd. The puzzle dwelt with me, unsolved, and the fingers of dread slowly crept over me.
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