Secret Worship by Algernon Blackwood

Author:Algernon Blackwood [Blackwood, Algernon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781447405887
Google: MsUYVFB0vsAC
Barnesnoble:
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

* * * * *

even beat vainly for escape. The end was near, and

When Harris came to himself he felt cold. He he knew it.

was lying under the open sky, and the cool air of

The dreadfully chanting voices rose about him in field and forest was blowing upon his face. He sat up a wave: “We worship! We adore! We offer!” The and looked about him. The memory of the late scene sounds filled his ears and hammered, almost mean-was still horribly in his mind, but no vestige of it re-

ingless, upon his brain.

mained. No walls or ceiling enclosed him; he was no

Then the majestic grey face turned slowly down-

longer in a room at all. There were no lamps turned

wards upon him, and his very soul passed outwards low, no cigar smoke, no black forms of sinister wor-and seemed to become absorbed in the sea of those shippers, no tremendous grey Figure hovering bey-anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands ond the windows.

forced him to his knees, and in the air before him he

Open space was about him, and he was lying on

saw the arm of Kalkmann upraised, and felt the a pile of bricks and mortar, his clothes soaked with pressure about his throat grow strong.

dew, and the kind stars shining brightly overhead.

It was in this awful moment, when he had given He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the up all hope, and the help of gods or men seemed heaped-up debris of a ruined building.

beyond question, that a strange thing happened. For

THE SECRET WORSHIP - 12 OF 15

He stood up and stared about him. There, in the in here I saw the building in the moonlight. They shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and opened the door. I saw the figures and heard the here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village voices and touched, yes touched their very hands, buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay and saw their damned black faces, saw them far nothing but the broken heaps of stones that be-more plainly than I see you now.” He was deeply be-

tokened a building long since crumbled to dust. wildered. The glamour was still upon his eyes with a Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and degree of reality stronger than the reality even of that great wooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, normal life. “Was I so utterly deluded?”

made lines through the general debris. He stood, Then suddenly the words of the stranger, which

then, among the ruins of a burnt and shattered he had only half heard or understood, returned to building, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively him.

that it had lain thus for many years.

“Haunted?” he asked, looking hard at him;

The moon had already set behind the encircling “haunted, did you say?” He paused in the roadway forest, but the stars that spangled the heavens threw and stared into the darkness where the building of enough light to enable him to make quite sure of the old school had first appeared to him.

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