The Fantasy Fan, Volume 1, Number 10, June 1934: The Fan's Own MagazineVarious
History
The Fantasy Fan, Volume 1, Number 10, June 1934: The Fan's Own Magazine
Various
Fan magazines; Fantasy fiction -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Fantasy fiction -- Periodicals
When Tillinghast said these things I remonstrated, for I knew him well
enough to be frightened rather than amused; but he was a fanatic,
and drove me from the house. Now he was no less a fanatic, but his
desire to speak had conquered his resentment, and he had written me
imperatively in a hand I could scarcely recognize. As I entered the
abode of the friend so suddenly metamorphosed to a shivering gargoyle,
I became infected with the terror which seemed stalking in all the
shadows. The words and beliefs expressed ten weeks before seemed bodied
forth in the darkness beyond the small circle of candle light, and I
sickened at the hollow, altered voice of my host. I wished the servants
were about, and did not like it when he said they had all left three
days previously. It seemed strange that old Gregory, at least, should
desert his master without telling as tried a friend as I. It was he
who had given me all the information I had of Tillinghast after I was
repulsed in rage.
Yet I soon subordinated all my fears to my growing curiosity and
fascination. Just what Crawford Tillinghast now wished of me I could
only guess, but that he had some stupendous secret or discovery to
impart, I could not doubt. Before I had protested at his unnatural
pryings into the unthinkable; now that he had evidently succeeded to
some degree I almost shared his spirit, terrible though the cost of
victory appeared. Up through the dark emptiness of the house I followed
the bobbing candle in the hand of this shaking parody of man. The
electricity seemed to be turned off, and when I asked my guide he said
it was for a definite reason.
"It would be too much.... I would not dare," he continued to mutter.
I especially noted his new habit of muttering, for it was not like
him to talk to himself. We entered the laboratory in the attic, and I
observed that detestable electrical machine, glowing with a sickly,
sinister violet luminosity. It was connected with a powerful chemical
battery, but seemed to be receiving no current; for I recalled that in
its experimental stage it had sputtered and purred when in action. In
reply to my question Tillinghast mumbled that this permanent glow was
not electrical in any sense that I could understand.
He now seated me near the machine, so that it was on my right, and
turned a switch somewhere below the crowning cluster of glass bulbs.
The usual sputtering began, turned to a whine, and terminated in
a drone so soft as to suggest a return to silence. Meanwhile the
luminosity increased, waned again, then assumed a pale, outre colour or
blend of colours which I could neither place nor describe. Tillinghast
had been watching me, and noted my puzzled expression.
"Do you know what that is?" he whispered, "_that is ultra-violet_." He
chuckled oddly at my surprise. "You thought ultra-violet was invisible,
and so it is--but you can see that and many other invisible things
_now_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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