The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales from Fantasy Adventures by E. C. Tubb & Sydney J. Bounds

Author:E. C. Tubb & Sydney J. Bounds [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, SF adventure, fantasy, classic science fiction, horror, space opera, science fiction, short stories
ISBN: 9781479401499
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-09-08T16:00:00+00:00

He had expected the door to be locked. Instead, it opened noisily and, after a momentary pause, he stepped inside. It was cool and dark inside the long hallway with its oak paneled walls.

At the end, he found himself in the huge banqueting hall with a massive table along the center and some twenty ornate chairs ranged neatly around it. Woven tapestries hung along the walls, their long drapes interspersed with large portraits.

He gave a little shudder. It was startling but everything looked as though the occupants had just stepped outside into the gardens a few moments before. There was not a speck of dust anywhere. There were no cobwebs festooning the walls and high corners, nothing out of place.

Yet this was utterly impossible. The solicitors had told him there was nothing but ruins after that fire two hundred years earlier. Evidently those old stories of a fire had been nothing more than that; old stories. Certainly it was a mystery why Sir Roger had left so abruptly and no one seemed to have been here since.

He had to admit there was an eerie atmosphere about it but he put this down to having been untenanted for so long. After exploring the rooms on the ground floor, he made his way up the wide stairway to the upper stories. Here, everything was as though it had been in use only the day before. There were eight bedrooms, all with clean sheets and covers on the beds.

In the last one at the end of a long corridor, he walked over to the window and looked out over the grounds. Once the rank weeds were dug up and burned it would not take long to get the gardens back into shape.

To his left was what had once been the orchard. Several fruit trees hung with blossom with the previous year’s leaves lying in thick carpets beneath them. He stood there for several minutes with the light of the setting sun shining directly into his eyes.

It was just as he turned away that he noticed something distinctly odd. For a split second he had the impression that the scene outside changed. Everything happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that he couldn’t be absolutely sure of what he saw. It was as if another scene had been abruptly superimposed upon the unkempt gardens outside.

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