The Undying Thing (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By Barry Pain

Barry Pain was a prolific and popular mystery and horror writer whose career spanned forty years. Though somewhat neglected in his day, he is now seen as an important writer, and a great inspiration for authors such as H. P. Lovecraft. Many of the earliest and most interesting vampire stories, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Oct 19, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447499732

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Thing

BARRY PAIN

Barry Eric Odell Pain was born in Cambridge in 1864. He was educated at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and shortly after graduating became a contributor to Granta. At the age of 25, he had his first story, ‘The Hundred Gates’, published in Cornhill Magazine. Partly off the back of this, Pain became a contributor to Punch and The Speaker, and joined the writing staff of the Daily Chronicle and Black and White.

Pain went on to have a writing career spanning nearly forty years, from the late-Victorian 1880s to the Jazz Age of the 1920s. He was a prolific writer, producing essays, novels, short stories and poems, usually with a lightly humorous or parodic tone. Arguably his best known works are the novels Eliza and An Exchange of Souls, published in 1900 and 1911 respectively. As recently as 2006, Eliza was serialised by BBC Radio 4.

During his lifetime, Pain was never really accepted as a writer of serious fiction. The notice of his death in the London Mercury lamented that he he never quite fulfilled his early promise, or did his gifts full justice. However, since his death he has come to be thought of as a defining figure in 19th century speculative fiction. An Exchange of Souls, for example, is credited with being inspirational to H. P. Lovecraft. Pain died in 1928, aged 63.

The Undying Thing

BARRY PAIN

1

Up and down the oak-panelled dining-hall of Mansteth the master of the house walked restlessly. At formal intervals down the long severe table were placed four silver candlesticks, but the light from these did not serve to illuminate the whole of the surroundings. It just touched the portrait of a fair-haired boy with a sad and wistful expression that hung at one end of the room; it sparkled on the lid of a silver tankard. As Sir Edric passed to and fro it lit up his face and figure. It was a bold and resolute face with a firm chin and passionate, dominant eyes. A bad past was written in the lines of it. And yet every now and then there came over it a strange look of very anxious gentleness that gave it some resemblance to the portrait of the fair-haired boy. Sir Edric paused a moment before the portrait and surveyed it carefully, his strong brown hands locked behind him, his gigantic shoulders thrust a little forward.

‘Ah, what I was!’ he murmured to himself – ‘what I was!’ Once more he commenced pacing up and down. The candles, mirrored in the polished wood of the table, had burnt low. For hours Sir Edric had been waiting, listening intently for some sound from the room above or from the broad staircase