Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 5 (1925-05).djvu/141

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A thrilling story of spiders—a tale that will send the cold shivers up your spine

''This is a hair-exercising tale—a gooseflesh story of gigantic spiders from which the growth limitations have been removed—spiders so enormous that they are fed on cattle. Into the web of one of these grotesque nightmares was thrown a young man, armed only with an ax. What happened to him is told in this exciting narrative.''

WEIRD TALES 317 Baldwin Bldg., Indianapolis, Ind.

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séance! Madly I rushed at the woman

I seem to remember hearing the softly modulated voice of the psychic addressing me; of a strange something enveloping me, a twilight—no, not twilight; that thrice-damned N-ray! Now I began to fight, but it was too late. My muscles refused to respond to the urgings of my brain. I remember particularly that I wanted to strangle that fiendish professor and smash his miscreated machines. No use; I could do nothing except at the mystic's command. The ghastly light had me nearly blinded, and within a few seconds I was suffering inexpressible torture. When the pain in my eye-sockets reached an intensity unbearable I must have passed out entirely. I have a confused sensation of falling—falling—recurring flashes of dazzling light—a monstrous whirling vortex into which I was being drawn—one pitying thought for Jack Hodge—oblivion

rest of the story I pieced out next day with the help of Roger Norton and the heavily scare-headed Clarion.

Roger tells me that my subjugation had taken but a moment—that it was over before anyone in the audience had decided on definite action. It had consisted only of a few purring phrases from Losieva and a momentary stab of the N-ray in my direction. Next the mystic was making slow passes over me which had—heaven be praised!—sent me into a normal, exhausted slumber. The ray had again lighted on the head of the creature on the platform; and after that things had happened too fast to permit any thought of me.

What had been Hodge had arisen heavily from the floor, to stand glaring at the audience and weaving slowly from side to side. Norton swore the thing's chest had swelled to enormous proportions and that as it stood half