In high summer, after a season of weird composition and the contemplation of vast, interstellar horrors, Lovecraft sought out the soothing and familiar architecture of Providence. It calmed his nervous disposition and the gnawing gestations of an ill-fated heredity.
At the apex of a hillside, where the horizon met the sky, in the cool air just before the twilight time of dreams, he encountered a structure heretofore unseen in his usual journeys. Elongated and compressed between its neighbors as if it had somehow just appeared there, it was not quite a witch house, yet its angles were all wrong. Its whitewash had been peeled away by the curious hands of wind and the rain, revealing deep scars and splinters of wood. The second story projected out and over the cobblestones and cast a long shadow which resulted in a sudden reduction of temperature. It was perfectly explainable, yet sojourning in its pall made him shudder and filled him with a feeling of unknown dread.
In the lower corner of the gable's glass, something stared out at him, or so it seemed, for he was still too far away to view it with precision. Moving closer, it appeared flat and motionless like rice paper. Narrowing his eyes, it instantly transmogrified into a sallow, oval shape then soon took on blurred dimensions as if vibrating at a great speed. In the moment that it took to ascertain whether what he saw was reality, it darted down and away.
The porch swing sang on its rusty chains. A silver whistle of metallic wind parted veils of red lace. Shadows of ivy rustled serpentine across white pillars. The sear door drifted open on hinges, silent.
Scaling resilient risers and stepping over the threshold of time, he descended on the stairway of sleep into the mirrored cavern of the stars.
©2018 by L.P. Van Ness. All rights reserved.
[genre:weird fiction essay, the original text,
hand written notebooks of L.P. Van Ness]
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