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The Wrists on the Door

by Horace Fish

Genre: Suspense
Setting:
Format of Original Source: Short Story
Recommended Adaptation Length:

Candidate for Adaptation? Not Reviewed

EXCERPT:

His thoughts were racing now, and even as he gripped the arms of the chair a still worse terror gripped his mind. His loneliness seemed to have become an actual thing, real as a person, a spirit haunting the luxurious, silent house. He was facing the door, and its heavy mahogany, fixing his attention through his staring gaze, seemed to be shutting him alone with the dead. Save for his trembling self and his wife’s painted eyes, the big room was lifeless. It was beyond the closed door that his imagination, now running beyond control, pictured the presence of his frightful guest–his own solitude, coming in ironical answer to his craving for companionship.

Were those live eyes of the dead creating his sense of an impending life in the house? Was it his wife, who, never having created a child for him, was forcing on him now a horrible companion? Again he started desperately toward the picture, again he caught himself, again he cried, “My God!” and faced his terror passionately, facing too, this time, the closed door.

“You fool! You fool!”


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