Free Final Reckonings by Robert Bloch

come!
    Fangs nipped at his thumb. He stood up, hastily, and kicked out at the furry beast. But another body brushed his other ankle, and then they were all around him. Their squealing rose. One of the tiny monstrosities was crawling up his leg, and he felt the touch of minute fingers clinging to his body.
    Jerome screamed, and knew Barsac had spoken the truth. The monsters he had created with his mind were going to kill him in revenge for Barsac's death. And there was no escape.
    Their squealing filled the corridor and their bodies blocked it completely. They swarmed around Doctor Jerome like ravening rats, but they were not rats. Jerome knew that if he should see them he would go mad. And if he did not see them they would crawl up his body and sink their horrible little mouths in his throat, stroke his face with their ghastly fingers.
    Jerome wheeled and charged down the corridor again. The nightmare ranks broke for a moment and he sped down the black corridor of the haunted castle with the beasts of Barsac at his heels. He was playing tag with death in a nighted lair, and death ran behind him on purposeful paws.
    Death squealed and chattered, and Jerome fled. He had to get out before they reached him, touched him, took him. He had to.
    Gasping in agony he reached the corridor's end, knowing that the horde was keeping pace. He turned again, ran forward. He never gave a thought to the stairs.
    And then, as the squealing rose and echoed in his ears, Doctor Jerome tumbled down the castle staircase and landed with a sickening little crunch that he never heard. His head lolled grotesquely on the broken stem of a neck. He lay next to the body of Sebastian Barsac, and like Barsac, he was quite dead.
    It was casual irony that chose this moment for the castle lights to flicker on again.
    They revealed nothing but the two bodies lying at the foot of the stairs. Mad Barsac lay dead, and so did mad Jerome.
    On the landing above, the twenty escaped guinea pigs blinked down with stupid, uncomprehending eyes.
     

The Skull Of The Marquis de Sade
    1
    C HRISTOPHER M AITLAND SAT BACK in his chair-before the fireplace and fondled the binding of an old book. His thin face, modeled by the flickering firelight, bore a characteristic expression of scholarly preoccupation.
    Maitland's intellectual curiosity was focused on the volume in his hands. Briefly, he was wondering if the human skin binding this book came from a man, a woman or a child.
    He had been assured by the bookseller that this tome was bound in a portion of the skin of a woman, but Maitland, much as he desired to believe this, was by nature skeptical. Booksellers who deal in such curiosa are not overly reputable, as a rule, and Christopher Maitland's years of dealing with such people had done much to destroy his faith in their veracity.
    Still, he hoped the story was true. It was nice to have a book bound in a woman's skin. It was nice to have a crux ansata fashioned from a thighbone; a collection of Dyack heads; a shriveled Hand of Glory stolen from a graveyard in Mainz. Maitland owned all of these items, and many more. For he was a collector of the unusual.
    Maitland held the book up to the light and sought to distinguish pore-formation beneath the tanned surface of the binding. Women had finer pores than men, didn't they?
    "Beg pardon, sir."
    Maitland turned as Hume entered. "What is it?" he asked.
    "That person is here again."
    "Person?"
    "Mr. Marco."
    "Oh?" Maitland rose, ignoring the butler's almost grotesque expression of distaste. He suppressed a chuckle. Poor Hume didn't like Marco, or any of the raffish gentry who supplied Maitland with items for his collection. Hume didn't care for the collection itself, either — Maitland vividly remembered the old servant's squeamish trembling as he dusted off the case containing the mummy of the priest of Horus decapitated for sorcery.
    "Marco, eh? Wonder what's up?" Maitland mused. "Well—better show him in."
    Hume turned and left