The darkness all around him was thick, black, stygian. It was a stifling, overwhelming, suffocating darkness. A horrifying terrifying darkness. A darkness of the nethermost pit of hell. Indescribable. It seemed an oppressive darkness, like the darkness of some foul underground dungeon, to which the blessed light of the sun never gained access. It was velvety, almost tactile. He was inhaling it; it was penetrating the pores of his skin; it seemed that the world had always been darkness, that the world alway would be darkness. It was a timeless darkness, a weird, horrifying, overwhelming eternal blackness. He felt as though this was the darkness of a tomb, and that he had been buried alive. . .
Fly, Witch, Fly
Writing as Leo Brett
A strange ordour came to Hargreaves' nostrils. He could not recognize it at first, yet it frightened him. Then suddenly horribly, he knew what it was. It was the smell of death, the aroma of decay, the odour of perishability, the effluvium of ephemerality. It was the emanation of doom, the smoke of mortification, the reek of putrefaction. It was the nidor of the lower regions.
The Exorcists
Writing as John E Muller
He felt a strange intangible fear. A fear that sent trickles of liquid ice running up and down his spine. A fear that made his eyes open wide, that made his teeth clench like the jaws of a steel trap, a fear that made his hair stand on end, that made the nerves of his stomach and solar plexus tie up into a series of complicated knots that would have delighted a Boy Scout or sailor. A fear that clenched and unclenched his fists as though the tendons of his arms were being subjected to some strange internal, electronic influence. It was the acme of fear, the quintessence of fear.
World of the Gods
Writing as Pel Torro
The co-pilot was right. Even with the eyes shut a blueness was still everywhere. The world had suddenly turned into a vast blue phantasmagoria, a panoply of blue that was everywhere. A vista of blue desert, of blue twilight. A blue glitter, a blue sparkle, a coralescing, scintillating blue that seemed to have no end and no beginning. There was no escape from it. It was an inevitable blue, an unescapable blue. They could smell it now, it seemed to be penetrating their nostrils, their lungs, the pores of their skin. It was seeping into their bodies as thought they were immersed in a bath of it. They felt that it was invading them, that somehow it was penetrating to the innermost depths of their souls, their minds and their bodies. There was no stopping that blueness.
Return of Zeus
Writing as John E. Muller
The judge's voice was harsh and dry and old, like the voice of a harsh, old parrot. He had tried to dispense justice impartially for so long, that he had finally succeeded horribly and become a machine. A man without a soul, without a heart. Pure, dry, legal mind. A wonderful judicial organ, but nothing more than that. Just a judicial cogwheel in the judicial machine. A highly important cogwheel, but a cogwheel nevertheless. Cogwheels have no souls. Cogwheels have no heart. Cogwheels have intellect but no feeling. That is the basic law of cogwheels of justice. The judge was a large efficient cogwheel in the great legal machinery.
The Mind Makers
Writing as John E. Muller
Escaping from an alien invasion by fleeing to the sewers, our intrepid band plays a word game with how dark it is.
"This is a horrible darkness," said Coningsby, suddenly.
"It's as black as night," whispered the Labour leader.
"Dark as pitch," said the Premier.
"Cimmerian," said Coningsby.
"Stygian," said the Liberal leader, not to be outdone.
"It's as black as Erebus," said Matheson.
"What we need is some kind of mechanical device to assist us in our nocti-vagation," said the Premier.
"This is darker than a cavern, darker than a mine, darker than a dungeon, darker than the deepest depths," said Dan Matheson, waxing almost poetical.
"Complete and utter blackout," said old Marshal Coningsby.
"It's pitch dark, soot black," exclaimed the Liberal leader.
"Completely Tartarean," said the Premier.
"Caliginous," said Dan Matheson.
"Likewise, gloomy, dismal, tenebrous and umbrageous," went on the Liberal leader...
"It's as though every light in the world," said the Premier, "had been extinguished, quenched, snuffed out----"
"Do you get the feeling," said Coningsby, "that it'll never be light again? Purely psychological, of course, but nevertheless, horrible." Almost at though his words had been some kind of signal to the darkness itself, the absolute blackness gave way to a kind of dimness, a sort of indistinctness. In the semi-darkness, in the strange, crepuscular twilight they moved onward with renewed hope.
Such light as there was was extremely faint, it was indistinct, blurred, bleary, lack lustre, leaden, and foggy, but nevertheless it was light. It was nebulous and only half-glimpsed, but it was light. It was grey and grisled, but it was light, it was veiled and overshadowed, it was like light that had mildew on it. It was obscure, as though the wick of the cosmic torch had been turned down, but nevertheless it was light. And it began to grow brighter . . . The obfuscation lessened.
Formula 29X
Writing as Pel Torro
