Fingers of Fear

Published by Nodens Books. This is a dark tale of the mystery and horror that gathered over the vast pile of gables that was Ormesby, the ancestral home of the Ormes family which, lost in one of the wildest and most isolated reaches of the Berkshires, was the topic of whispered and fearful comment by the natives for miles around. Recluses in the great mansion, guarded by a pack of ferocious dogs, the family jealously nursed its secret. Ormond Ormes, last of a long line of New England merchant princes, sometimes ventured into the world to make a slight effort to straighten out the confusion of his affairs. But his beautiful sister, Gray, was at home with the ghosts, even jested about them with a kind of macabre humor, and never stirred from the dusty passages, the ranks of little used chambers, and the wild grounds of Ormesby. There were other Ormes women there, silent creatures living in their memories, cowering in terror under the fate that threatened the family. Into this atmosphere young Seaverns was plunged when, jobless and down to his last cent, he accepted an offer from Ormond Ormes to complete a history of Early American literature for which Ormond’s grandfather had gathered the enormous library that now reposed under thick layers of dust at Ormesby. But the history was never written, for Seaverns had few moments of peace once he crossed the threshold of the ill-fated house. Good horror stories are among the great rarities of the publishing world. We are fortunate in having this thrilling narrative unfolded by J.U. Nicolson, whose rich imagination has produced such volumes of poetry as “The King of the Black Isles” and “Sonnets of a Minnesinger,” and whose already well developed ability to spin a tale was sharpened during the long years he spent on his monumental modern English version of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. It is with good reason, then, that we expect Fingers of Fear to take its place beside such great horror stories as Dracula and The Turn of the Screw.

About the Author

J(ohn) U(rban) Nicolson (1885-1944) was a Chicago warehouse manager with literary interests. Fingers of Fear (1937) was his only novel, a precursor to the melodramatic horror of the 1960s like the television show Dark Shadows.

Reviews

News