The Beast with Five Fingers (Heathen Short)

William Fryer Harvey (1885-1937), trained as a physician, was an English master of macabre and uncanny short fiction that blends psychological horror with spiritual unease. One of his best-known stories, "The Beast with Five Fingers," sees a mild-mannered scholar inherit the estate of his brilliant but eccentric uncle, only to discover that the dead man's severed hand - preserved in a box - has developed a will of its own. At first a curiosity, it crawls from drawers, terrifies the servants...