The Thing from the Lake

There are reasons why I always feel myself at a disadvantage with Aunt Caroline. The first of these brings me to a trifling matter that I should have set down before, but which...

I opened heavy eyes to meet the eyes of Ethan Vere, who bent over me. Phillida was there, too, pale of face. But what was That just vanishing into the darkness beyond my window-...

We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phillida and Vere were together, chairs touching, her right hand curled into his left. Bagheera the cat had slipped into...

The fog stayed all day. The mist was so dense that it gave the effect of a solid mass enclosing the house. No wind stirred it, no cheering beam of sun pierced it. Through it sou...

It trailed suavely through my fingers, slipping across my palm like a belt of silk. It glided with the noiseless haste of a thing in flight. Quite naturally, even in the dazed m...

My little cousin, rosy beyond belief, trim in white middy blouse and blue skirt, was already in her place behind the coffeepot. Vere sat opposite her at the round table. They we...

In the darkness Time crept along like a crippled thing, slow-moving, hideous. Outside fell the monotonous drip, drip from trees and bushes, likened by Phillida to a horrid clock...

"For may not the divell send to their fantasie, their senses being dulled and as it were asleep, such hills and glistering courts whereunto he pleaseth to delude them?"--KING JA...

For myself, I have always found that excitement stimulates imagination. There are others, I know, who can do no creative work except when all within and without is lulled and ca...

I have come to the end of this narrative and with the end, I come to what people of practical mind may call its explanation. Of the four of us who were joined in living through...

"If the Dreamer finds himself in an unknown place, ignorant of the country and the people, let him be aware that such place is to be understood of the Other World."--ONEIROCRITI...

I woke slowly. It seemed that I struggled to wakefulness as a spent swimmer struggles toward shore. Up, up through deep poles of sleep I dragged myself, driven by some dimly sen...

After luncheon, I drove over to the village with Phillida, who had some housewifely orders to give at the shops. On second thoughts, Vere and I had agreed to tell her nothing ab...

Now I entered a time of experiences differing at every point, yet interwoven closely, so that my days might compare to a rope whose strands are of violently contrasted colors. T...

I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the young grass had gold in its gre...

The uproar of rushing waters was still in my ears. But I was in my chair before the hearth in the living room of the farmhouse, and the noise was the din of a tempest outside.

Next morning, I took my car and began a systematic investigation of the neighborhood. There proved to be few houses within reasonable distance where such a woman as my lady coul...

Desire Michell had been no traditional old hag, hideous and malevolent; no pallid, raving epileptic to accuse herself in shrieking tales of Black Men, and Sabbats, and harm done...

In the after-knowledge I now possess of what was to happen there, that impression is not more clearly definite than it was at my first sight of the place. Let me at once set dow...

Desire Michell was beside me, and I could not rise or answer her. She bent over me, so that the Rose of Jerusalem fragrance inundated me and drove back the sickening air that wa...

"The heart is a small thing, but desireth great matters. It is not sufficient for a kite's dinner, yet the whole world is not sufficient for it."--HUGO DE ANIMA.

At ten o'clock, next morning, I was summoned from my sleep by the bell of the telephone beside my bed. It was not a pleasant sleep, although I had not returned to my apartment u...