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Door!"

Categories: GHOST STORIES FROM LITERARY SOURCES
Scary Books: The Haunters & The Haunted
: EDGAR ALLAN POE

As if in the superhuman energy of his utterance there had been found the

potency of a spell--the huge antique panels to which the speaker

pointed, threw slowly back, upon the instant, their ponderous and ebony

jaws. It was the work of the rushing gust--but then without those doors

there DID stand the lofty and enshrouded figure of the Lady

Madeline of Usher. There was blood upon her white robes, and the

evidence of som
bitter struggle upon every portion of her emaciated

frame. For a moment she remained trembling and reeling to and fro upon

the threshold, then, with a low moaning cry, fell heavily inward upon

the person of her brother, and in her violent and now final

death-agonies, bore him to the floor a corpse, and a victim to the

terrors he had anticipated.



From that chamber, and from that mansion, I fled aghast. The storm was

still abroad in all its wrath as I found myself crossing the old

causeway. Suddenly there shot along the path a wild light, and I turned

to see whence a gleam so unusual could have issued; for the vast house

and its shadows were alone behind me. The radiance was that of the full,

setting, and blood-red moon which now shone vividly through that once

barely discernible fissure of which I have before spoken as extending

from the roof of the building, in a zigzag direction, to the base.

While I gazed, this fissure rapidly widened--there came a fierce breath

of the whirlwind--the entire orb of the satellite burst at once upon my

sight--my brain reeled as I saw the mighty walls rushing asunder--there

was a long tumultuous shouting sound like the voice of a thousand

waters--and the deep and dank tarn at my feet closed sullenly and

silently over the fragments of the "HOUSE OF USHER."



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