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TRICK OR TREAT Boxed Set: 200+ Eerie Tales from the Greatest Storytellers

E-BookEPUBePub WasserzeichenE-Book
6500 Seiten
Englisch
e-artnowerschienen am16.10.2018
Trick or Treat! Get a worm cup of tea, curl by the fire, and enjoy the cold chills of this meticulously edited horror collection, jam-packed with the darkest mysteries, supernatural thrillers and gothic romances: James Malcolm Rymer & Thomas Peckett Prest: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart The Fall of the House of Usher The Cask of Amontillado The Masque of the Red Death The Murders in the Rue Morgue Mary Shelley: Frankenstein The Mortal Immortal The Evil Eye John William Polidori: The Vampyre Bram Stoker: Dracula Théophile Gautier: Clarimonde The Mummy's Foot Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Spectre Bridegroom Henry James: The Turn of the Screw The Ghostly Rental H. P. Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror From Beyond M. R. James: Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book Lost Hearts Wilkie Collins: The Haunted Hotel The Dead Secret E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower The Terror by Night Nathaniel Hawthorne: Rappaccini's Daughter Ambrose Bierce: The Death of Halpin Frayser One Summer Night Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan The Three Impostors William Hope Hodgson: The House on the Borderland The Night Land Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder M. P. Shiel: Shapes in the Fire Arthur Conan Doyle: The Leather Funnel The Beetle Hunter Ralph Adams Cram: Black Spirits and White Grant Allen: The Reverend John Creedy Dr. Greatrex's Engagement Richard Marsh: The Beetle Thomas Hardy: What the Shepherd Saw The Grave by the Handpost Charles Dickens: The Signal-Man The Hanged Man's Bride Guy de Maupassant: The Horla The Flayed Hand Pedro De Alarçon: The Nail Walter Hubbell: The Great Amherst Mystery Francis Marion Crawford: The Dead Smile The Screaming Skull Man Overboard! For The Blood is the Life The Upper Berth By The Water of Paradise The Doll's Ghost John Buchan: No-Man's-Land The Watcher by the Threshold The Monkey's Paw The Severed Hand The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (Daniel Defoe) When the World Was Young (Jack London)...mehr

Produkt

KlappentextTrick or Treat! Get a worm cup of tea, curl by the fire, and enjoy the cold chills of this meticulously edited horror collection, jam-packed with the darkest mysteries, supernatural thrillers and gothic romances: James Malcolm Rymer & Thomas Peckett Prest: Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street Edgar Allan Poe: The Tell-Tale Heart The Fall of the House of Usher The Cask of Amontillado The Masque of the Red Death The Murders in the Rue Morgue Mary Shelley: Frankenstein The Mortal Immortal The Evil Eye John William Polidori: The Vampyre Bram Stoker: Dracula Théophile Gautier: Clarimonde The Mummy's Foot Washington Irving: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow The Spectre Bridegroom Henry James: The Turn of the Screw The Ghostly Rental H. P. Lovecraft: The Dunwich Horror From Beyond M. R. James: Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book Lost Hearts Wilkie Collins: The Haunted Hotel The Dead Secret E. F. Benson: The Room in the Tower The Terror by Night Nathaniel Hawthorne: Rappaccini's Daughter Ambrose Bierce: The Death of Halpin Frayser One Summer Night Arthur Machen: The Great God Pan The Three Impostors William Hope Hodgson: The House on the Borderland The Night Land Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder M. P. Shiel: Shapes in the Fire Arthur Conan Doyle: The Leather Funnel The Beetle Hunter Ralph Adams Cram: Black Spirits and White Grant Allen: The Reverend John Creedy Dr. Greatrex's Engagement Richard Marsh: The Beetle Thomas Hardy: What the Shepherd Saw The Grave by the Handpost Charles Dickens: The Signal-Man The Hanged Man's Bride Guy de Maupassant: The Horla The Flayed Hand Pedro De Alarçon: The Nail Walter Hubbell: The Great Amherst Mystery Francis Marion Crawford: The Dead Smile The Screaming Skull Man Overboard! For The Blood is the Life The Upper Berth By The Water of Paradise The Doll's Ghost John Buchan: No-Man's-Land The Watcher by the Threshold The Monkey's Paw The Severed Hand The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown House The Apparition of Mrs. Veal (Daniel Defoe) When the World Was Young (Jack London)...
Details
Weitere ISBN/GTIN9788026897989
ProduktartE-Book
EinbandartE-Book
FormatEPUB
Format HinweisePub Wasserzeichen
FormatE101
Verlag
Erscheinungsjahr2018
Erscheinungsdatum16.10.2018
Seiten6500 Seiten
SpracheEnglisch
Artikel-Nr.4013952
Rubriken
Genre9201

Inhalt/Kritik

Leseprobe
I. The Strange Customer at Sweeney Todd's

Table of Contents


Before Fleet-street had reached its present importance, and when George the Third was young, and the two figures who used to strike the chimes at old St Dunstan's church were in all their glory - being a great impediment to errand-boys on their progress, and a matter of gaping curiosity to country people - there stood close to the sacred edifice a small barber's shop, which was kept by a man of the name of Sweeney Todd.

How it was that he came by the name of Sweeney, as a Christian appellation, we are at a loss to conceive, but such was his name, as might be seen in extremely corpulent yellow letters over his shop window, by anyone who chose there to look for it.

Barbers by that time in Fleet-street had not become fashionable, and no more dreamt of calling themselves artists than of taking the Tower by storm; moreover they were not, as they are now, constantly slaughtering fine fat bears, and yet somehow people had hair on their heads just the same as they have at present, without the aid of that unctuous auxiliary. Moreover Sweeney Todd, in common with his brethren in those really primitive sorts of times, did not think it at all necessary to have any waxen effigies of humanity in his window. There was no languishing young lady looking over the left shoulder in order that a profusion of auburn tresses might repose upon her lily neck, and great conquerors and great statesmen were not then, as they are now, held up to public ridicule with dabs of rouge upon their cheeks, a quantity of gunpowder scattered in for a beard, and some bristles sticking on end for eyebrows.

No. Sweeney Todd was a barber of the old school, and he never thought of glorifying himself on account of any extraneous circumstance. If he had lived in Henry the Eighth's palace, it would have been all the same to him as Henry the Eighth's dog-kennel, and he would scarcely have believed human nature to be so green as to pay an extra sixpence to be shaven and shorn in any particular locality.

A long pole painted white, with a red stripe curling spirally round it, projected into the street from his doorway, and on one of the panes of glass in his window was presented the following couplet:

Easy shaving for a penny,
As good as you will find any.


We do not put these lines forth as a specimen of the poetry of the age; they may have been the production of some young Templer; but if they were a little wanting in poetic fire, that was amply made up by the clear and precise manner in which they set forth what they intended.

The barber himself was a long, low-jointed, ill-put-together sort of fellow, with an immense mouth, and such huge hands and feet, that he was, in his way, quite a natural curiosity; and, what was more wonderful, considering his trade, there never was seen such a head of hair as Sweeney Todd's. We know not what to compare it to: probably it came nearest to what one might suppose to be the appearance of a thickset hedge, in which a quantity of small wire had got entangled. In truth, it was a most terrific head of hair; and as Sweeney Todd kept all his combs in it - some said his scissors likewise - when he put his head out of the shop-door to see what sort of weather it was, he might have been mistaken for some Indian warrior with a very remarkable head-dress.

He had a short disagreeable kind of unmirthful laugh, which came in at all sorts of odd times when nobody else saw anything to laugh at at all, and which sometimes made people start again, especially when they were being shaved, and Sweeney Todd would stop short in that operation to indulge in one those cacchinatory effusions. It was evident that the remembrance of some very strange and out-of-the-way joke must occasionally flit across him, and then he gave his hyena-like laugh, but it was so short, so sudden, striking upon the ear for a moment, and then gone, that people have been known to look up to the ceiling, and on the floor, and all round them, to know from whence it had come, scarcely supposing it possible that it proceeded from mortal lips.

Mr Todd squinted a little to add to his charms; and so we think that by this time the reader may in his mind's eye see the individual whom we wish to present to him. Some thought him a careless enough harmless fellow, with not much sense in him, and at times they almost considered he was a little cracked; but there were others, again, who shook their heads when they spoke of him; and while they could say nothing to his prejudice, except that they certainly considered he was odd, yet, when they came to consider what a great crime and misdemeanour it really is in this world to be odd, we shall not be surprised at the ill-odour in which Sweeney Todd was held.

But for all that he did a most thriving business, and was considered by his neighbours to be a very well-to-do sort of man, and decidedly, in city phraseology, warm.

It was so handy for the young students in the Temple to pop over to Sweeney Todd's to get their chins new rasped: so that from morning to night he drove a good business, and was evidently a thriving man.

There was only one thing that seemed in any way to detract from the great prudence of Sweeney Todd's character, and that was that he rented a large house, of which he occupied nothing but the shop and parlour, leaving the upper part entirely useless, and obstinately refusing to let it on any terms whatever.

Such was the state of things, AD 1785, as regarded Sweeney Todd.

The day is drawing to a close, and a small drizzling kind of rain is falling, so that there are not many passengers in the streets, and Sweeney Todd is sitting in his shop looking keenly in the face of a boy, who stands in an attitude of trembling subjection before him.

'You will remember,' said Sweeney Todd, and he gave his countenance a most horrible twist as he spoke, 'you will remember, Tobias Ragg, that you are now my apprentice, that you have of me had board, washing, and lodging, with the exception that you don't sleep here, that you take your meals at home, and that your mother, Mrs Ragg, does your washing, which she may very well do, being a laundress in the Temple, and making no end of money: as for lodging, you lodge here, you know, very comfortably in the shop all day. Now, are you not a happy dog?'

'Yes, sir,' said the boy timidly.

'You will acquire a first-rate profession, and quite as good as the law, which your mother tells me she would have put you to, only that a little weakness of the headpiece unqualified you. And now, Tobias, listen to me, and treasure up every word I say.'

'Yes, sir.'

'I'll cut your throat from ear to ear, if you repeat one word of what passes in this shop, or dare to make any supposition, or draw any conclusion from anything you may see, or hear, or fancy you see or hear. Now you understand me - I'll cut your throat from ear to ear -do you understand me?'

'Yes, sir, I won't say nothing. I wish, sir, as I maybe made into veal pies at Lovett's in Bell Yard if I as much as says a word.'

Sweeney Todd rose from his seat; and opening his huge mouth, he looked at the boy for a minute or two in silence, as if he fully intended swallowing him, but had not quite made up his mind where to begin.

'Very good,' he said at length, 'I am satisfied, I am quite satisfied; and mark me - the shop, and the shop only, is your place.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And if any customer gives you a penny, you can keep it, so that if you get enough of them you will become a rich man; only I will take care of them for you, and when I think you want them I will let you have them. Run out and see what's o'clock by St Dunstan's.'

There was a small crowd collected opposite the church, for the figures were about to strike three-quarters past six; and among that crowd was one man who gazed with as much curiosity as anybody at the exhibition.

'Now for it!' he said, 'they are going to begin; well, that is ingenious. Look at the fellow lifting up his club, and down it comes bang upon the old bell.'

The three-quarters were struck by the figures; and then the people who had loitered to see it done, many of whom had day by day looked at the same exhibition for years past, walked away, with the exception of the man who seemed so deeply interested.

He remained, and crouching at his feet was a noble-looking dog, who looked likewise up at the figures; and who, observing his master's attention to be closely fixed upon them, endeavoured to show as great an appearance of interest as he possibly could.

'What do you think of that, Hector?' said the man.

The dog gave a short low whine, and then his master proceeded, 'There is a barber's shop opposite, so before I go any farther, as I have got to see the ladies, although it's on a very melancholy errand, for I have got to tell them that poor. Mark Ingestrie is no more, and Heaven knows what poor Johanna will say - I think I should know her by his description of her, poor fellow. It grieves me to think now how he used to talk about her in the long night-watches, when all was still, and not a breath of air touched a curl upon his cheek. I could almost think I saw her sometimes, as he used to tell me of her soft beaming eyes, her little gentle pouting lips, and the dimples that played about her mouth. Well, well, it's of no use grieving; he is dead and gone, poor fellow, and the salt water washes over as brave a heart as ever beat. His sweetheart, Johanna, though, shall have the string of pearls for all that; and if she cannot be Mark Ingestrie's wife in this world, she shall be rich and happy, poor young...
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