The Undying Monster A Tale of the Fifth Dimension

by Kerruish, Jessie Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780712354936
• ISBN10: 071235493X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-10-01
• Publisher: British Library Publishing

Summary

First published in 1922, The Undying Monster secured Jessie Douglas Kerruish's place in the history of British Weird fiction. The novel was adapted for the screen in 1942, and remains one of the definitive twentieth-century tales of lycanthropy and occult detection.

'Where grow pines and firs amain, Under Stars, sans heat or rain, Chief of Hammand, ‘ware thy Bane!'

The Hammand family have been hounded by an ancient curse for generations; now, after the close of the First World War, the only two survivors are Oliver and Swanhild. When Oliver is beset by a creature in the forest surrounding the Hammand estate, the siblings resolve to meet the curse head on before it seals their fate in the form of a violent death. Enlisting the service of the occult detective Luna Bartendale, the investigation begins to unshackle the Hammands from their doom, and the stage is set for battle with an immortal force of savage horror.

Author Biography

Jessie Douglas Kerruish (1884–1949) was a British writer of romantic, horror, and historical fiction, descended from an ancient Manx family. She was a regular contributor to The Weekly Tale-Teller, finding success with the publication of Miss Haroun-al-Raschid (1917) and The Girl from Kurdistan (1918), novels set in North Africa and the Middle East, before publishing her best-known work, The Undying Monster, 1922.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
Introduction 7
A Note from the Publisher 14

Book I Search by the Supersensitive

I To Thunderbarrow Shaw 19
II In Thunderbarrow Shaw 27
III Oliver Half Remembers 34
IV A Witch Hunt in Prospect 40
V Suez-West-of-Suez 48
VI Of the Vampire Hammands 55
VII More Dimensions than Four 63
VIII “Another Dimension—possibly a Fifth” 70
IX “Pardon for… 26,000 Yeares and 26 Daies” 75
X The Hand of Glory 83 XI Runic Writing 91
XII “? ? ? ? ? ?: Hammand—” 99
XIII “O, C, G, Q, or S, and E, or Z” 107
XIV The First of the Fourth Estate 113
XV “An Entirely New Crime—” 120

BOOK II The Mound of the Golden Pigtails

I To Summon the Warlock 127
II Lewes Martyrs and Golden Pigtails 133
III Ancestral Autobiography 140
V “To Open Thunder’s Barrow” 152
VI Churchyard Mould 158
VII Golden Calf and Dragon Ship 165
VIII “The Hidden Room—To-Night—” 174
IX “In the Names of the Asa Gods—” 183
X “… The Explanation—in a Single Word” 189
XI “Let down by the Golden Pigtails” 197
XII The Clue of Clues—1520–1651 204
XIII The Clue of Clues—1651–1920 213
XIV “… ? ? ? ? ? ?: Hammand:…” Again 220

BOOK III The Night of Three Thousand Years

I The Spirit of the Age Takes a Hand 229
II The Monster at Large 237
III In the Fifth Dimension 242
IV One Loose Link 251
V “Bronze Age to Judgment Day” 260
VI The Vow of Sigmund the Volsung 265
VII Judgment Day on the Horizon 273
VIII The Hour of Three Thousand Years 280
IX The Last Twilight—and After 289
X A Night of Cloudless Stars 295
Envoi 299