Secret Worship (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

By Algernon Blackwood

This stand-alone short story is one of Algernon Blackwood's masterful John Silence tales, exploring the strange and mysterious adventures of a psychic doctor.

A silk merchant is traveling home through the perilous mountains of southern Germany when he decides to visit his old school. He fondly remembers the strict discipline and dedicated religious education he underwent at the school over 30 years ago, and how the system had shaped his life and brought him peace. Yet, the institution isn't all he remembers, and the merchant soon finds himself entrapped in a disturbing Brotherhood ritual.

First published in 1908, Secret Worship is a chilling work of weird literature and a must-read for fans of classic horror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fantasy and Horror Classics
• Release date: Nov 22, 2023
• ISBN: 9781528799065

Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English journalist, novelist, and short story writer. Born in Shooter’s Hill, he developed an interest in Hinduism and Buddhism at a young age. After a youth spent travelling and taking odd jobs—Canadian dairy farmer, bartender, model, violin teacher—Blackwood returned to England and embarked on a career as a professional writer. Known for his connection to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, Blackwood gained a reputation as a master of occult storytelling, publishing such popular horror stories as “The Willows” and “The Wendigo.” He also wrote several novels, including Jimbo: A Fantasy (1909) and The Centaur (1911). Throughout his life, Blackwood was a passionate outdoorsman, spending much of his time skiing and mountain climbing. Recognized as a pioneering writer of ghost stories, Blackwood influenced such figures as J. R. R. Tolkien, H. P. Lovecraft, and Henry Miller.

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SECRET WORSHIP

By

ALGERNON BLACKWOOD

Fantasy and Horror Classics

Copyright © 2023 Fantasy and Horror Classics

This edition is published by Fantasy and Horror Classics,

an imprint of Read & Co.

This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any

way without the express permission of the publisher in writing.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

Read & Co. is part of Read Books Ltd.

For more information visit

www.readandcobooks.co.uk

Contents

Algernon Blackwood

SECRET WORSHIP

Algernon Blackwood

Algernon Henry Blackwood was born in Shooter’s Hill, South East England, in 1869. In his youth he trained as a doctor at Wellington College in Berkshire, and went on to pursue a number of careers, in areas as varied as milk farming, modelling, journalism and violin teaching. In his thirties, Blackwood returned to England from New York, where he had spent a number of years, and began to write stories of the supernatural.

Blackwood was extremely prolific, producing over the course of his life some ten original collections of short stories, fourteen novels, several children’s books, and a number of plays. Most of his work was concerned with the ghostly, mythical or occult—themes which Blackwood was attracted to his whole life—and he is regarded as one of the earlier practitioners of ‘weird fiction’. Amongst his best known short stories are ‘The Wendigo’, and ‘The Willows’—a work which H. P. Lovecraft called the finest weird story I have ever read. In 1914, he produced his short story collection Incredible Adventures, which leading literary critic S. T. Joshi has said may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century. Blackwood worked as an undercover agent for Britain during the First World War, and during the 1920s became famous for reading his ghost stories live on BBC radio and television.

After a number of strokes, Blackwood died in old age in Kent, England.

SECRET WORSHIP

First published in 1908

Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany on his way home from a business trip when the idea came to him suddenly that he would take the mountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to revisit his old school after an interval of something more than thirty years. And it was to this chance impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of St. Paul's Churchyard that John Silence owed one of the most curious cases of his whole experience, for at that very moment he happened to be tramping these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and from different points of the compass the two men were actually converging towards the same inn.

Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years had been concerned chiefly with the profitable buying and selling of silk, this school had left the imprint of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps unknown to Harris, had strongly coloured the whole of his subsequent existence. It belonged to the deeply religious life of a small Protestant community (which it is unnecessary to specify), and his father had sent him there at the age of fifteen, partly because he would learn the German requisite for the conduct of the silk business, and partly because the discipline was strict, and discipline was what his soul and body needed just then more than anything else.

The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, and young Harris benefited accordingly; for though corporal punishment was unknown, there was a system of mental and spiritual correction which somehow made the soul stand proudly erect to receive it, while it struck at the very root of the fault and taught the boy that his character was being cleaned and strengthened, and that he was not merely being tortured in a kind of personal revenge.

That was over