The Lair of the White Worm

The Lair of the White Worm is a horror novel by the Irish writer Bram Stoker. The story is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm. It has also been issued as The Garden of Evil.

The plot focuses on Adam Salton, originally from Australia, who is contacted by his great-uncle, Richard Salton, in 1860 Derbyshire for the purpose of establishing a relationship between these last two members of the family. His great-uncle wants to make Adam his heir. Although Adam has already made his own fortune in Australia he enthusiastically agrees to meet his uncle, and the two men become good friends. Adam travels to Richard Salton's house in Mercia, Lesser Hill, and quickly finds himself at the centre of mysterious and inexplicable occurrences, with Sir Nathaniel as guide.

The new heir to the Caswall estate (known as Castra Regis or the Royal Camp), Edgar Caswall, appears to be making some sort of a mesmeric assault on a local girl, Lilla Watford. Arabella March, of Diana's Grove, seems to be running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Caswall. Edgar Caswall is a slightly pathological eccentric who inherited Mesmer's chest which he keeps at the Castra Regis Tower. Caswall wants to recreate mesmerism, associated with Franz Mesmer, which was a precursor to hypnotism. He is obsessed with Lilla Watford, and attempts to break her using his mesmer. Fortunately, with the help of Lilla's cousin Mimi, he is thwarted time and again. Caswall orders a giant kite in the shape of a hawk built to scare away pigeons which have gone berserk and attacked his fields and destroyed his crops. For lack of anything better to do he obsessively watches the kite and begins to believe that it has a mind of its own and that he himself is a god.

Adam Salton discovers black snakes on the property and buys a mongoose to hunt them down. He then discovers a child who has been bitten on the neck. The child barely survives. He learns that another child was killed earlier while animals were also killed throughout the county. Caswall's servant, Oolanga, an African man obsessed with death and torture, prowls around the estates, glorying in the carnage left by the White Worm. Adam's mongoose attacks Arabella, who shoots it to death. Adam procures more mongoose and keeps them locked in his trunks when not using them to hunt. Arabella tears another mongoose apart with her hands. Caswall's servant takes a peculiar liking to Arabella, perhaps sensing something violent in her. Arabella scorns Oolanga's advances and is deeply insulted that he would dare approach her. In an attempt to win her over, Oolanga steals one of Adam's trunks (which he believes is filled with treasure, but is actually just another mongoose), and Adam follows Oolanga. Arabella lures Oolanga to a deep well in her house, then murders him in rage and disgust, by dragging him down into the deep pit tunnelled through a bed of white china clay. Adam witnesses the murder which he cannot prove, and Arabella writes him a letter the next day with the previous night's events twisted to claim her innocence. Adam and Sir Nathaniel begin to suspect Arabella guilty of the other crimes.

Adam and Sir Nathaniel de Salis, who is a friend of Richard Salton's, then plot to stop Arabella by whatever means necessary. They suspect that she wants to murder Mimi Watford, whom Adam later marries. Nathaniel is an Van Helsing-type character who wants to hunt down Arabella, who he believes, with increasing conviction, is the White Worm of legend.

The White Worm is a large snake-like creature that dwells deep beneath the earth under Arabella's house located in Diana's Grove. The White Worm has green glowing eyes and feeds on whatever it hunts down. Sir Nathaniel believes that the White Worm is descended from dragons, who traded their physical power for cunning. The White Worm ascends from the pit and seeks to attack Adam and Mimi Watford in the forest of Diana's Grove. Adam is able to foil Arabella's multiple attempts to murder Mimi.

Arabella offers to sell Diana's Grove, which Adam buys in hopes of destroying the White Worm. Adam plans to clog the pit with sand and carefully placed dynamite to kill the giant White Worm while it is underground. Caswall's last visit to Lilla ends in her death.

In the final chapters, Mimi Watford confronts Edgar Caswall who lures her to the roof of Castra Regis as a storm springs up, as he has finally succumbed to madness. He shows off his kite despite the thunderheads building in the sky. Arabella, who had been stalking Mimi, watches from nearby and steals some of the wire holding the kite, apparently unspooling it all the way back to her house. When Mimi discovers Caswall has locked her onto the roof she shoots off the lock with a gun Adam gave her for protection and flees for home. Adam convinces her to go back outside with him and they witness the following events: the massive thunderstorm breaks over Castra Regis, grounded by the kite, and demolishes the tower; then travels through the wire Arabella had run to Diana's Grove and igniting the dynamite, pulverizing the White Worm and the house with it.

By : Bram Stoker (1847 - 1912)

Chapter 01



Chapter 02



Chapter 03



Chapter 04



Chapter 05



Chapter 06



Chapter 07



Chapter 08



Chapter 09



Chapter 10



Chapter 11



Chapter 12



Chapter 13



Chapter 14



Chapter 15



Chapter 16



Chapter 17



Chapter 18



Chapter 19



Chapter 20



Chapter 21



Chapter 22



Chapter 23



Chapter 24



Chapter 25



Chapter 26



Chapter 27



Chapter 28

Comments

Random Post

  • Sự tích Con mối làm chứng - truyện cổ tích việt nam
    23.10.2023 - 0 Comments
    Ngày xưa có hai vợ chồng một nhà nghèo đói nọ, có một đứa con, chừng mười một, mười hai tuổi nhưng thông minh…
  • Noites de insomnia, offerecidas a quem não póde dormir, volume 1
    21.12.2019 - 0 Comments
    Camilo Castelo Branco foi o primeiro escritor português a conseguir viver dos seus trabalhos literários.…
  • Twenty Years After
    10.03.2020 - 0 Comments
    Let's continue the D'Artagnan Romances that we've already started with The Three Musketeers. The novel…
  • Sandhya, Songs of Twilight
    27.11.2020 - 0 Comments
    Dhan Gopal Mukerji wrote Sandhya, Songs of Twilight while in San Francisco, as a way to support himself and…
  • The Clicking of Cuthbert
    18.12.2019 - 0 Comments
    The Clicking of Cuthbert is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse, all with a golfing…
  • Going Abroad? Some Advice
    20.11.2020 - 0 Comments
    Going abroad for a holiday or business is always exciting, but we can only imagine how exciting it would have…
  • Reise durch England und Schottland
    26.12.2019 - 0 Comments
    1819 gerät das Handelshaus, bei dem Johanna Schopenhauer ihr ganzes Geld angelegt hat, in…
  • The Sword Maker
    15.10.2020 - 0 Comments
    Times are hard in Frankfort. Defeat in war, weak leadership, trade blockades and a starving population lead…
  • Little Dorrit
    06.03.2020 - 0 Comments
    Book One begins in the infamous Marseilles Prison in France, where two prisoners, Rigaud the French rogue…
  • The Adventures of Sally
    03.08.2019 - 0 Comments
    This romantic comedy stars a young American girl named Sally, who inherits a considerable fortune and finds…
  • Pioneer work in the Alps of New Zealand, a record of the first exploration of the chief glaciers and ranges of the Southern Alps
    08.02.2021 - 0 Comments
    “Situated as we were at Camp 2, in fine rata bush, with a luxuriant undergrowth of tree-ferns and other…
  • The Little Lame Prince
    06.09.2021 - 0 Comments
    In the story, young Prince Dolor, whose leg was paralyzed from childhood trauma, was banished to a desert…
  • The Texan Scouts
    01.08.2020 - 0 Comments
    This is a sequel to Texan Star and continues the adventures of young Ned Fulton as he finds himself a part of…
  • On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
    26.10.2018 - 0 Comments
    On the Origin of Species (or more completely, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or…
  • Concerning Virgins
    03.10.2021 - 0 Comments
    Concerning Virgins is a series of letters, compiled into three “books,” St. Ambrose wrote to his sister,…
  • Atala
    28.06.2020 - 0 Comments
    What were the lower Mississippi River, Gulf Coast regions, and Appalachians of North America like in the…