The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs (Heathen Short)

The Monkey's Paw

Heathen Short #3
Author
W.W. Jacobs
Translator
First Edition
1902
Heathen Edition
2025
Refreshed
Pages
26
Heathen Genera
Arriving Soon-ish, Creepy AF
ISBN
979-8-90075-003-3

He took the paw, and dangling it between his forefinger and thumb, suddenly threw it upon the fire. White, with a slight cry, stooped down and snatched it off.

“Better let it burn,” said the soldier, solemnly.

“If you don’t want it, Morris,” said the other, “give it to me.”

“I won’t,” said his friend, doggedly. “I threw it on the fire. If you keep it, don’t blame me for what happens. Pitch it on the fire again like a sensible man.”

The other shook his head and examined his new possession closely. “How do you do it?” he inquired.

“Hold it up in your right hand and wish aloud,” said the sergeant-major, “but I warn you of the consequences.”

William Wymark Jacobs (1863–1943) was an English author best known for his 1902 story “The Monkey’s Paw,” first published in Harper’s Monthly, then collected in his The Lady of the Barge that same year. A humorist by trade, Jacobs here delivers something far darker: a parable of wishcraft and consequence, so lean it feels chiseled, and as compact as it is catastrophic. In a rain-slick English parlor, a cursed talisman changes hands — from soldier to family, from caution to curiosity. What begins as maternal grief abruptly curdles into spiritual trespass, and the price is steep. The paw grants three wishes, yes, but each one is a rung down the ladder to ruin. The warning is clear: the paw does not punish, it fulfills — and in that fulfillment lies the profane undoing.

Test Your Might

Available on backorder

“Powerful in conception and thoroughly artistic in execution.”
New-York Tribune

You might dig these, too!

The Willows & The Wendigo (Heathen Edition)

The Willows + The Wendigo

Algernon Blackwood
The Spider by Hanns Heinz Ewers (Heathen Short)

The Spider

Hanns Heinz Ewers
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson (Heathen Edition)

The House on the Borderland

William Hope Hodgson

Heathen Gift Card