"The Horror of the Heights" is a short horror story by Arthur Conan Doyle. It was first published in '' Strand Magazine'' in 1913.

Synopsis

The story is told through a blood-stained notebook discovered on the edge of a farm in

Withyham Withyham is a village and large civil parish in the Wealden district of East Sussex, England. The village is situated 7 miles south west of Royal Tunbridge Wells and 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Crowborough; the parish covers approxi ...

. The notebook is written by a Mr. Joyce-Armstrong, and the first two and last pages are missing; the notebook is thus dubbed the "Joyce-Armstrong Fragment". Joyce-Armstrong, a brave aviator, had been curious over the deaths of certain pilots who tried to break the current height record of 30,000 feet. Recent casualties involve some strange deaths – one, Hay Connor, died after landing while he was still in his plane, while another, Myrtle, was discovered with his head missing. Joyce-Armstrong speculates that the answer to these deaths may be the result of what he calls "air-jungles":

There are jungles of the upper air ��One of them lies over the Pau- Biarritz district of France. Another is just over my head as I write here in my house in
Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...
. I rather think there is a third in the Homburg-
Wiesbaden Wiesbaden () is a city in central western Germany and the capital of the state of Hesse. , it had 290,955 inhabitants, plus approximately 21,000 United States citizens (mostly associated with the United States Army). The Wiesbaden urban area ...
district.

Joyce-Armstrong takes his

monoplane A monoplane is a fixed-wing aircraft configuration with a single mainplane, in contrast to a biplane or other types of multiplanes, which have multiple planes. A monoplane has inherently the highest efficiency and lowest drag of any wing con ...

to a height of 40,000 feet and is nearly hit by three meteors. It is then that he learns that his speculations are right: entire

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syste ...

s (air-jungles) exist high in the atmosphere, and are inhabited by huge,

gelatinous Gelatin or gelatine (from la, gelatus meaning "stiff" or "frozen") is a translucent, colorless, flavorless food ingredient, commonly derived from collagen taken from animal body parts. It is brittle when dry and rubbery when moist. It may also ...

, semi-solid creatures. After going through a flock of animals superficially resembling jellyfish and snakes, Joyce-Armstrong is attacked by a more solid-looking but amorphous creature with a beak and tentacles, from which he narrowly escapes. He then returns to the ground. The aviator writes he will be going up again to the air-jungle to bring back proof of his discoveries, but here the fragment ends, save for one last sentence which reads:

"Forty-three thousand feet. I shall never see earth again. They are beneath me, three of them. God help me; it is a dreadful death to die!"

The narrative outside the notebook then explains that Joyce-Armstrong has been missing and that his monoplane was discovered in a wreck on the border of

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

and Sussex.

Collections

The story has appeared in a number of collections, the earliest being ''Danger! and Other Stories'' (1918), as well as in more general collections like Volume 5 of '' The Road to Science Fiction''.

Adaptations

The story formed a part of '' Forgotten Futures III''.

Notes

References

*
"The Horror of the Heights"
at

Locus Magazine ''Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field'', founded in 1968, is an American magazine published monthly in Oakland, California. It is the news organ and trade journal for the English-language science fiction and fantasy fields ...

's Index to Science Fiction
"The Horror of the Heights"
at the Index to Science Fiction Anthologies and Collections, Combined Edition

at the FictionMags Index

External links

''Tales of Terror and Mystery''
at

Project Gutenberg Project Gutenberg (PG) is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, as well as to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks." It was founded in 1971 by American writer Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital libr ...