A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, October 1950 — page 68: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE ELIXIR OF HATE 67 “The Alkahest—again!” he whispered raucously. Only too true. During the night the hellish elixir, periodic in its action, had been at work again. The features he now looked at, with wild and horror-blasted eyes, were no longer those of a man in the full, virile prime and flood of life. No; save for the color of the eyes and the general contour of the face, Dennison vould hardly have recognized himself. At the utmost estimate, he now ap- peared scarce one-and-twenty. And the end—the end was not yet come. CHAPTER 19 Flight! LMOST fainting with numb ter- ror, Dennison set the candle down, staggered back to his chair, fell into it, and burying his head in both hands, began rocking to and fro in an abandon of hideous despair. Wordless and dumb, save for a little moan from time to time, he fought his fight. At last, unable to keep quiet any long- er, he sprang up and fell to pacing the floor. Every few minutes he stopped, and by the wavering candle-light, again studied his transformed face, hoping against hope that his eyes might have deceived him. But no—always the same sight met his gaze. Anguished beyond the limit of any- thing he had thought possible, his brain a whirling maze of torture, a thousand thoughts, fears, wonders, agonies all beat upon his racked and riven consciousness. Fear, now at last, had driven its grip right through and through his soul. Fear so sickening, so hideously inexorable, that his face grew gray, his eyes glared wildly at thought of what the future might bring forth—what it must! “No, no, no!” he cried, shivering, his teeth beginning to chatter. Out he threw his arms, as though to ward off this in- tangible, this merciless vampirism of the Alkahest, this thing he could by no means on earth reach or deal or grapple with. “No, no! It must not be! It cannot!” Yet, all this time, far down in the depths of his soul he knew it could—it must! For the first time in all his life, he stood now face to face with a train of thought he dared not carry to its logical, its only possible conclusion. For the first time, confronted by a series of scientific crises, by a new kind of involution—a natural process, an inescapable concatena- tion—he found himself shrinking like a mere child that fears the darkness of an empty, unseen room. And, strong man that he still was, he covered his eyes with his crisp hands, sank to the floor and for a long time re- mained there, stupefied with horror. Only from time to time some discon- nected words escaped him, some mean- ingless, futile scrap of prayer to a power which heeded him no more than it might a crushed worm or wounded ant. Low burned the candle. It smoked, flickered, and at last went out, drowned in a little pool of melted wax. The char- red wick glowed red a while, filling the room with a smell of charred cotton. Darkness fell. Dennison roused himself. Unsteadily he crawled on hands and knees to the bed, got up onto it, and lay there distorted. Then, after a long while, his troubled breathing grew calmer. He slept. After a certain while, a soft step crept along the hallway, outside the Ameri- can’s door. It stopped there. Silence. Then very gently the door-knob turned. The door soundlessly opened two or three inches. Dennison did not awake or even stir. For a minute or two, no sound save the American’s sighing breath. One sensed, rather than saw, that a tall form was standing in the doorway, listening acutely, watching with eyes which by some special power or secret of their own could penetrate the gloom. Finally, as though quite satisfied, the watcher slowly closed the door again, and ulet as a cat—withdrew along the pitch-black corridor. Dennison awoke, at early dawn, dazed and in a thoroughly confused state of mind. At first he could not understand what had happened, or why he should be lying there fully dressed upon the bed, with the windows and blinds fast-closed, the (C(O)