The Man Who Would Not Die

'The Man Who Would Not Die' is a horror novel written by Thomas Page. The story begins in a room where blue flames flickered above the coal on the stone-framed hearth, blue phantoms of fire that threw no light into the vague tunnel of the long room. Even their warmth was cheerless, and their dull mutter ominous, as though brooding fear had found expression in the low crackle of the fire. There was no other sound, except the whispered rattle of a pulled-down window shade, whispering to the uncontrollable quiver of a slim hand that gripped its edge. The woman whose white fingers crumpled the hem of the blind, pulling it away from the glass minutely to make a slit for her to peer through fearfully, was a taut, pale blur against the broader, vertical shadow of the window's embrasure. The man just behind her, shrouded in gloom so that only the glimmer of his white shirt-front and the pallid oval of his blunt-jawed face were visible; ached to take her slender, maturely rounded form in his arms—to cover her lips with kisses—although his scalp was a cap squeezing his skull and his spine was an icy shiver. But instead, his hand tightened on the rough butt of an automatic in the pocket of his dinner jacket; his ears strained for some hint of approaching menace.