Read Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror for Free Online Page A

Harriet opened the door and stepped in, she was blinded by dazzling light, bursting in from one side of the room as if it were a conservatory. She turned back to the door to leave. But when she grabbed the door handle it would not move. The door was locked.
    Harriet turned back to the room to see if there was a connecting door to the other room or some other way out. When she did so, she saw a figure looming towards her out of the blazing light. Beyond her she could just make out other girls sitting in chairs about the room, staring horribly as if in a trance, their faces gaudily painted with rosy cheeks and arched eyebrows, slumped in stiff and awkward poses.
    At first she had thought that she could not make out the features of the approaching girl because of the light behind her head, but now, with a terrible, falling feeling, as if she had stepped from a high cliff, she realised that the girl had no features to see. Harriet pounded on the door for help.
    'Please!' she shouted. 'Maud! For God's sake! Help me! Help me!'
    But that infinitesimal beat on the doll's house door was lost to everyone. Everyone but Olivia.

    I was so gripped by my uncle's story that it was some time before I thought to look down at the doll he had placed in my hand before he began.
    I brought the tiny figure up to my face and studied it afresh. The rosy firelight glow warmed up the features of the face and made the detailed painting even more startling. The features of the girl's face seemed impossibly, unfeasibly real.
    'So, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague. 'Does that tale in any way alter your views on contact between the living and the dead?'
    'Well,.' I said. 'I would have to say that, respectfully, it does not. It is, after all, merely a story.'
    'Merely a story?' said my uncle with a sudden violence that made me drop the doll into my lap. 'Merely a story? Is that what you think? That these tales are my inventions?'
    'Well . . . yes . . . I rather thought they were. I am sorry if I have offended you, sir.'
    'No, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague with a sigh. 'I am sorry to have snapped at you. What else would you think? I shall take that from you now.' He held out his long hand towards the doll. 'A lady does not like to be stared at.'
    I gave him the doll and he walked over to the cabinet, putting it back where it had been. Again, he turned his back to me and looked out of the window. I could see that I had wounded his feelings in some way, but I was not sure how. Surely he did not expect me to accept these stories as true. How could they be?
    'Come and look at this, Edgar,.' said Uncle Montague.
    He had moved over to examine a group of framed prints near the window. I got up to join him and as I walked towards him I had the strangest feeling that there was someone outside by the window, someone who ducked out of sight as I approached. I peered out but there was nothing to be seen.
    My uncle was looking at a framed engraving of some sort of sculpture. It had the rather stilted quality of ancient engravings, but nevertheless it rendered its subject with enough skill to make it quite a startling image.
    The sculpture itself took the form of a horned devil and even to my untrained eyes it had a medieval look about it. So it proved to be.
    Initially I thought it was a gargoyle, as it was the kind of grotesque one frequently sees jutting out of a church tower, but on closer inspection I could see that the thing was carved in wood. I could also now see that it was part of the fabric of a church pew.
    Quite why anyone - the original woodcarver or the engraver - would want to take the trouble to portray anything quite so odious was beyond me, but my uncle stared at it as if it were a portrait of a favourite granddaughter.
    'Is the engraving valuable, sir?' I asked.
    'The engraving?' said Uncle Montague. 'No, Edgar. It is not particularly valuable. It is the subject matter that is significant.'
    'But what is it, Uncle?'
    'Why, Edgar, it is a demon, of