-Howard Philips Lovecraft





I. The Witch House

I'd say that I arrived at the old house around 6 or so. It was the middle of summer, so there was still some daylight left. Getting into the place was certainly no problem, as time had not been very kind to the windows or the roof of the house. I was able to let myself in with only a short hop onto a windowsill.

Now, like anyone who lives near the town of Barrowfield will tell you, the old Towneley estate is quite a ways out of town, over in the Pendle Hill country- a never-ending collection of fields, abandoned farmland, brooding woods, and low hills. Perfect, if you ask me- the countryside was just as grim as the legends attached to this old house I was preparing to spend the night in.

I call it "perfect", because I needed all of the macabre ambiance I could squeeze into my desperate "let's find inspiration in the rotting middle of nowhere" project- and this old place had the look, the feel, and the history that practically wrote stories for you.

I am a writer by profession- if indeed, writing can be called a "profession"- for me, up to this point in my life, it always seemed more like a masochistic kink- a matter of expressing my heart out so that other people could flippantly tear it to pieces, and I could go home, dejected, looking forward to my diet of 15 cent oriental noodles and water. I guess it was sheer pride that kept me trying- or some deeper, more vagrant urge that doesn"t even have a name.

I had recently begun seeking inspiration from the past. "Everyday life" in the modern world was dull to me, and history was always my favorite subject. The countryside surrounding me was full of its own history, a less-known, secret history that only the locals were privy to- the kind of history that got passed over as local "stories and superstition", but that had unlimited potential for the dreamer, or the ambitious writer.

I was always something of an amateur folklorist, and I remember waking up one depressed evening three weeks back, after a long, restless nap, and finding myself flooded with the memories of the stories that I had heard as a young boy about the old Towneley estate, and the doctor who had tried to live there with his family so many years ago.

Now, to be fair, the countryside is packed full of every kind of ghost story, witch legend, and ghoulish occurrence that you can dream of. To the old folk, every hill and country cemetery, and every boarded-up, abandoned influenza hospital with an overgrown graveyard behind it was a nightly witness to a parade of supernatural activity. I think that this shire had more haunted houses and woods than the rest of the country put together.

But the country around Pendle Hill was especially famous up here. To begin with, it was thought to be a meeting place for witches since time out of mind. It seems that in the late 1600"s, the wealthy Towneley family built a very large manor out in that countryside, on the edge of the Woods south of Pendle Hill.

The Towneleys were an odd lot, to be sure; the matriarch of their family, Dame Sybil de Towneley, was legendary in her own time as the "great queen" of all witches in this shire. Stories about Old Dame Sybil were told to me by my own grandparents- they told how she was ageless, and how she rode from Pendle Hill to Boulsworth Hill on certain special nights, with her white familiar-cat, Pelling Jill, perched in the crook of her black-draped arm. She rode to meet her lover, a great and wicked huntsman who lived in the Boulsworth woods, and whose ghost was sometimes spotted or heard in the night, often around the same time that a camper or a hiker went missing out there.

The Towneleys built their house in lonely seclusion, and, as the stories went, held great feasts and orgies to their master, or their "king" who was never quite identified- but he appears in the local folklore regarding the northern country, as the "king in secret". Of course, the church and the legitimate social authorities at the time considered this unknown "king" to be none other than the Devil himself, but that always struck me as the typical, unimaginative conclusion that all of the country clergymen leaped to when presented with lore or customs of possibly ancient origin.

So, the Towneley family held their legendary witches' Sabbaths, and were supposedly often joined in their feasts by their "master" himself, and by the "hidden folk" who lived out in the woods and in the caves under Pendle Hill. This went on for quite a long time, before the family seemed to die out; the local history simply stops mentioning them after a point, except for the stories of the ageless Dame Sibyl still riding about the Countryside.


All of this makes for quite a good campfire-story, which brings us to the well-known rumor surrounding the next family that restored and moved into the old Towneley manor around 1860: a country doctor named Edward Thorne, his wife, and his young daughter.

On this point, the local legends say even less, only that the doctor, his wife, and their staff disappeared, leaving just the little girl alone at the house- a little girl who was found later totally oblivious of her parents' disappearance, innocently playing with a tea-kettle full of what seemed to be blood. I know it sounds strange, but that was how the story went.

Quite predictably, dark rumors circulated, and got darker as time passed, and the house was abandoned and never lived in again.

So I decided to change that; to write a new chapter of the legend. Scary legends of witches and disappearing people are always interesting; it's almost faddish up in the big cities to "play witch" and be interested in the occult and in paranormal phenomenon. I find that most people have at least a passing interest in these subjects, no matter what. So I resolved to go spend the night up at the old Towneley House, and see if I could be inspired to write a story about what might have happened there.


I didn't really know what to do or to expect; I suppose I had all kinds of fantasies of finding some clue as to what really happened to the Thornes, or of just seeing or hearing strange things- either way, I wasn"t afraid to try. I was born 50 kilometers from Pendle Hill; I grew up in its shadow; I wasn"t afraid of my own countryside, or any of its legends. If anything, I figured that Dame Sibyl might be amused for a change to have someone unafraid to approach her, and to ask her how things were "in her neck of the woods". I felt that if the Thornes were now unhappy shades wandering around in their house, that they"d be happy to finally have a biographer to reveal their true story to the world.

Many people, including my few friends, would have given me a hard time about my idea, or worse, decided to sneak out to the old house on the night I spent there for the purpose of playing pranks, so I kept my plans to myself.


This whole plan had one more dimension, of which you should be aware. As a struggling artist of the written word, I sometimes indulged my senses in hallucinogenic substances- all for the very noble purpose of heightened creativity, of course. If you"ve ever done hallucinogens before, then you already know that where you do them is very important. Every place has a different "feel" to it- every place inspires different visions when your altered mind-state experiences it. The happy, silly trips you had around friends at a club were totally different from the ones you had in the dark, peaceful park at night, when you were alone.

My drug of choice was the golden-sprinkled mushroom that grew in the fields past the Apps farm, out on Lockley lane. For my special night, I had brought 7 good-sized caps with me, courtesy of my good friend Ian. I told him that I"d be giving them to a friend in Leeds who wanted to try them. A small lie, but I wanted no complications.

I just wanted to get out to the house, get inside, look around, wait for the sun to start to go down, and swallow my mushrooms- and spend the next nine or ten hours having visions of macabre, gothic beauty and mystery.

Looking back, I guess what I really wanted was for the old folklore to live again; I wanted to see faces in the ground, hear witches chanting out in the night around red fires, and see the little folk of the Pendle Hill woods. I wanted to see ghosts, hear the Dame"s horse go by, hear screams, and try to understand, as only a tripping man can, how a place can become more than just a place with the passage of time, with the drama of human lives lived out within its walls, and with the accumulation of so many curious folktales.


* * *


I am pleased to report that there were no complications; I parked my car ten miles outside of town at an abandoned house, and walked along an old hedge and fence-line, and then turned north and walked till I could see Pendle Hill in the distance. It didn't take long to find the remains of the house.

As I said before, time had not been kind to the old place, so getting in was no chore. I was very impressed by the dust covered, bare-board remains in the house; there was no real furniture to speak of, but there were empty shelves and mantles.

On one of the mantles, in the fading light, there was a lump under the dust, which turned out to be a small picture frame with a faded last-century photograph of a very young girl with a basket of flowers. I didn't want to make any guesses; I wanted to get under the influence of my fungal muse as soon as I could, because to be honest, I was a little disturbed once I got to the creepy old place, and I realized that the sun was rapidly fading, and that I would be here alone in the dark soon, whether I liked it, or not. At least while I was tripping, I would have no sense of the slow passing of time. I could just swallow the mushrooms, have a flight of imagination, and before I knew it, it would be morning.

Well, that was the theory, anyway. I sat down in the large front room of the house, with leaves and dust all over the floor, before the remains of a very large fireplace, and I swallowed my caps. I waited in the shadows there, with the twilight outside, listening to a scraping noise in the ceiling above me, which then became the sound of an owl hooting at the darkening sky. In my shire, twilight was called the "owl light", and I was always happy to make connections.

I zoned out for a while, before I started to feel strange. My legs began to tingle, which told me that the alkaloids in the mushrooms were beginning their work. I stood up, but felt slightly dazed; it was very dark. I could make out the immense shapes of the rooms around me, and I stumbled into the adjoining room, the one with the old picture on the mantle, and felt very ill. I emptied my stomach out in the corner, but could not see the mess I had made, it was so dark. I realized that there was no pain, either; my senses were numb and I felt lightheaded.

I walked softly back into the room with the missing window that I had let myself in through, and then walked right back out and towards the distant sound of laughter that I heard coming from near the fireplace. It sounded like a little girl. I went into that room, and sat down, as a thousand waves of multi-colored, invisible light began to sweep through my head, and I started to snicker uncontrollably at the idea of a little ghost girl running around this really creepy old house.

I felt like there were rainbows in my hands, and the trees outside had taken on a strange luminescence. It filled this large room with light, a light that was so bright it allowed me to see my shadow. After a long, profound moment of mental silence, my shadow detached from me and slithered away.





II. Pelling Jill

I walked in peace, as though in a dream, to the front door, and opened it. I knew that I had been sleeping for a long time, and that I had to move around some now. I looked outside and was filled with a great sense of peace and satisfaction by what I saw.

In the field before the house, in the strange day-like glow, there was a young girl skipping along, picking flowers. She was dressed like the girl in the old photograph; only this little girl was real. She was grinning and enjoying the simple pleasures of life as only a child can. I"d say she must have been about 5 or 6 years old.

I strolled down the front stair to the house, and felt the soft grass under my bare feet; how my shoes got off I will never know. I enjoyed the feel of the grass; it was like a thousand warm, writhing currents of air under my feet. I smelled the sweet scent of the pollen in the air, and walked up behind the little girl, whose back was to me, her bonnet totally obscuring her face.

Right as I got near to touching her, she turned around and glared at me- but instead of the little blond cherub that had just been laughing and picking flowers, there was an obscene, scaly and dark face in the bonnet- with yellowish, glowering eyes that were full of all of the animalistic malice of nature, and yet tinged with a devious intelligence that was ages older. Its mouth was cracked open, exposing a row of teeth that were like a shark"s; I almost had to vomit again with the fear that shot through me like a bolt of electricity.

I fell straight backwards onto the ground, shocked, as the monstrosity leered at me for about three or four more frozen seconds, and then faded away into a cloud of little darting insects. The sweet smell of the pollen was gone. It was night again, and I was sitting alone outside the Towneley house, with my head spinning.

I began to panic a little; some part of my mind still seemed to remember that I had swallowed a handful of hallucinogenic mushrooms, and I started to become paranoid that maybe I had poisoned myself; perhaps I had gotten the legendary "black mushroom" in my handful, and was now dying. I started to have trouble breathing, and to feel a sense of impending doom. My anxiety attack ended suddenly when I heard something behind me.

I heard a soft padding noise, and turned to look at the front porch of the house, and there, a white cat was slowly walking down the steps. I didn't seem to mind this; I thought it was kind of funny, actually, and I snickered to myself as this white cat walked straight towards me.

The approach of the cat was suddenly the last thing on my mind, as right then I heard the sound of a horse screaming out in the fields before me. I jumped to my very numb feet, and could feel my guts shaking as the unseen horses pounded the ground. I was terrified that they were going to run over the little girl, so I ran out into the dark field, waving my hands, and yelling.

I don"t know how long I did this before I remembered that the little girl was actually some kind of green scaly horror, and I gradually stopped caring whether or not a horse trampled her to death.

Around the same time I stopped caring, the loud sounds and the vibrations also stopped, but I could still see some people riding on horses through the fields, silently toward the house. They were dark figures, and they rode along with my eyes tracking them; and when I noticed the house again, it was all lit up, with lights shining from all its windows, and looking in much better repair than it was before.

I looked down at my feet and noticed a white cat cleaning one of its rear paws. It stopped when it felt my eyes on its back, and looked up at me with round, dark feline orbs. We locked eyes for a moment.

I said "Hi" to it.

It said "You are in danger here" to me, right back.

Around this point in time, I remember laughing at this as though it were the funniest thing that ever could have happened to me, or anyone else, at any time. Now, granted, a cat speaking IS funny, but in a very terrible, reality-shaking kind of way, not a comical one.

But I laughed so hard that I cried, and when I cried, I really started crying. I think that something in me realized that this was a bad dream that I couldn"t wake up from. I started to feel a sense of dread that I could not shake, and I wanted to walk to my car and go home. I didn't want to see scaly little girls or talking cats anymore. I didn't want rainbows in my hands or Horses running silently around. I thought maybe I"d go write about dog shows over in Liston or fictional "harsh reality dramas" about the Boer war.

I looked down at the cat again, and it was still staring. My world had become a pastel darkness, a great whirlpool of coldness and moonlight, and screeching insects. I began to shiver, standing out in the cold field in front of this old house, and talking to a cat.

The cat said "Come on and walk; the Master will be coming soon." It walked away from me, off to the east, and I followed it, even though I couldn"t feel my feet very much.

I asked the cat "So where is the little girl?"

It replied "Dead and gone, friend, for many years now. What you saw was no descendant of Adam and Eve, but the old Bergamot, called to this place centuries ago, by the Grand Array of my mistress."

I was listening with much interest to this talk, when I suddenly found myself staring at the grass, and becoming mesmerized by the undulating motion it was making in the moonlight. It was like a thousand serpents, with rainbows playing about their mouths, offering warmth and understanding to me. I stooped down and grinned, trying to remember this sight, and wondering why everyone I knew took things so seriously. I could feel that everyone I associated with had a dangerous problem with stress; that they all took things far too harshly. There was no need for all that.

My reverie was interrupted by the white cat, which now had a glaring look in its eye. "Reject this absent-mindedness of yours, and you may yet live to see another dawn," it said. "Not that it matters to me, truly. What happens to you now is up to the Master."

I had some interest here. "Who is the Master?" I asked. "And where are we going?" The cat said "Only the Vanishing People can tell you who the Master is. it's not my place. I am not great enough to speak his name."

So we continued walking east. I felt like a door was opening up in my head. I started to feel very warm, and to imagine that I was seeing a portal of seven layers, stretching from my head into the heavens themselves. All things in the universe felt beautiful and still. The cat next to me trotted on, and I found myself walking onto what looked like a long, narrow track.





III. The Vanishing People

I was walking down this track running east from the old house, where hundreds of moths were fluttering all about, and there were strange rocks standing everywhere. The remains of old fires were black lumps by the greatest of the stones, and the wind was suddenly warm. It was nighttime, and yet, I could see as though it were day.

I was dressed strangely, not as I had been, but I thought nothing of it. I didn't recognize the strange shoes that I was wearing, or even how I got shoes back on my feet.

There was a river, or a long narrow weir up ahead of me, and a dark ribbon of forest far across the water. It was calling to me, to come to it with happy haste. I wiped a bead of sweat away and started to move faster. I forgot all about my strange feline companion.

Right at that moment, a hare ran across the track, with a fox in hot pursuit. Halfway across the track, the fox stopped short, turned its head in my direction, and flicked its white-tipped tail.

It regarded me, for a few seconds, and without a sound, it became a young man. He was bronze-faced and he carried a twig of what looked like birch-wood. He smiled and said "I shall tell you the song of the Master, the King of this track, who comes in every dawn." He then sang in a strange, high-pitched voice:

"A gentleman who carries Light, white and gold;
The tree-shadows lengthen; His glory is grand!
The Lord of the array, with gold and brass,
With plates and bells, and horns a-marvel;
Keeper of the ways in hidden rows, the horses" tracks,
His gathering resounds and echoes joyful;
His star rises and shines, His hooves are hard,
And radiant His tines, His head of fire."



And with that, the man faded away into one of the strange stones. I heard the white cat say to me, from a distance "Come now into the light of the trees".

So, I wandered off the track, into the woods, and I could hear the white cat"s voice from somewhere far away, telling me that "Near at hand, the three sisters made their home." I felt impressed, as though I wanted to meet these three sisters. But I was more in awe at this wood: majestic and living, and so sweet of scent, these strange trees concealed mysteries older than man. It was the "forest primeval" that you only read about in the works of the Romantics. I felt like I was in another world.

I passed near a clearing where a two-tined forked pole stood upright from the ground, with the remains of a fire smoldering before it. I could see visions in my head of shrouded people convening there in secret. A few moments later, I came to a hidden road striking through the woods; a narrow track that the white cat told me was called "Robin"s Road", and which I guessed was aligned to Pendle Hill further south.

I heard a buzzing somewhere near, and saw a hive of bees, dripping with amber honey. One of the bees buzzed closed by, and in a moment, it had become a woman, a young woman with golden hair, and a dress the color of straw. She looked at me for a long moment, and she said, "I shall tell you the song of the King of these woods, these trees which cradle the south-winding track." She sang, in a voice as smooth as silk:

"Dark Satyr with foliage about the crown,
Hobgoblin and Master of the wooded hall-
He lays His head in living boughs!
The birds scream His name; seed that saves!
And the woody silence is thick with glee,
Impish Lord of the fields" own life;
May dancing rings, red days and red nights,
In the woods before the hill."



And with that, the honeybee-woman faded away, leaving me with the hum of the bees, and a slight feeling of faintness in my heart.

I had to lie down and rest. I was feeling numb all over. I was brought back to awareness by the white cat pawing at my face and kneading me with its claws. Without understanding why, I stood up and started walking back to the Witch-house.

I turned and walked back to the crumbling edifice in the midst of it all; the dark windows and gray wood of the house stood out, on the edge of the hill-wood, as a second twilight seemed to overtake the spectral world. An Owl called hauntingly from that unseen nest in the fragile roof. A darkening Moor spread out to the west of me, and I walked quietly into it, along the track that cut across it like a pale ribbon, the track called the "Ghost Road" by the white cat.

All the while I could hear the Owl calling far behind me. I fancied I could hear the sounds of the unseen dead muttering to themselves their final regrets; I looked for their shapes in the dusk, but I was more frightened not to see them there. I imagined them jealous of my life, trying to drag me with them across the river of time.

I heard a deep croaking and I saw a great toad staring at me from the soft, dark ground. It moved once, its muscles sliding under its bumpy skin, and then it became a thin, white haired man. He looked through me with his empty eyes, and said "I can tell you the song of the Master of the water"s edge, whose blade runs red with the blood of all the dead of the world, coloring the sunset itself crimson." He sang, in a raspy tone:

"In further places, a distance from the narrow way,
Past where the Elder stands, and a stable bare for hay,
Black ground and red sunset, there,
Where the mare of the Queen may wade
For forty nights and forty days, there
The river red and dark drains wide:
The Old Man of the Lady"s word, fierce bright,
Will ferry the mournful dead to weer reside;
And all will bow before the Lass."



And with that, the toad-man faded into the newborn night. I could no longer see at all.

Scared and alone, I did not want to see the river that this "ghost road" led onwards to; I walked back to where I knew the old house was, and veered out further into the country with the cold wind from the north stinging my face. The moon would not rise for a long time in this new night, but the first faint stars were there to keep me company.

I pressed out further north, along the faint track that ran into the unknown, with the night countryside watching me from all sides. This was the kind of night where the entire world watched a person- and this road, I knew, could lead down as far as Hell itself.

I had gone so far that I didn't know where I was anymore. I fancied I heard dogs howling and yelping in the distance, and perhaps the sound of a horse crashing through the bracken, when suddenly an Owl swooped silently by me, startling me. It landed on the skeleton of a dead tree nearby, and folded its wings, staring at me with its unblinking gaze.

I stared right back, but it was gone. Under the tree there stood a woman with black hair and black eyes, and luminescent skin. With no moon and a few stars, I could see her plainly- she walked forward, and told me "I know the song of the true King, the Faery King, who sometimes rides this way, on nights such as these. I shall tell you, little man." She sang, in a cold voice:

"There, dead from life, the other place,
Dark and continuous, my hidden land;
Dark to living men, and dark the King
That sweeps in with winter"s wind-
The Lord of invisible places, Son of Art,
Black cloak and mount, and cold of heart,
Words in dark wood and draped in black;
Wise and furious, Wind and wiser still."



And with that, She too was gone, although I thought I heard an owl call from far away. I sat down and began crying my eyes out, and for the first time, I realized I was freezing cold all over. I think I must have fallen asleep out there, because I have a big blank spot in my memories around this time. I may have wandered around jabbering to fence-posts or to dead trees- countless strange mental adventures are possible in every hour of these fungus-dreams- but I have no way of knowing what I did. I just don"t remember.




IV. The Master"s Book of Poems

Later, I found myself sitting on the front steps of the old house. The moon was high, bathing the countryside in pastel and white. I felt perfectly euphoric, as though nothing was wrong in the entire world. The white cat was there with me, cleaning itself again.

My eyes scanned around the glimmering nighttime countryside, and I could see a strange, dark figure, very short, standing out in the field near a tree line staring at me. It cracked a smile, and the moonlight glinted off its row of teeth. Even from such a distance, I knew that it was the terrible thing that I had mistaken for the little girl.

I felt alarmed. I had to ask the cat "Is that thing going to come over here? Are we safe here?" The cat glanced over and said "Who can say? He is very hungry, all the time, and he has not had a proper meal since the last people who came here." I swallowed hard and started to feel my chest tightening up.

I finally made a decision. "I"m going inside" I announced, and stood up, as the world tilted to an odd angle. When it righted itself, I walked up to the door, and stopped short. It was solid and new, with a huge rack of antlers spreading from a mounting above it. The windows were all shuttered and the large front porch was clean. A very old-style broom leaned to the left of the door. The house had been resurrected. It was no longer a ruin. I could hear commotion inside, people laughing and I could see a glow from under the door.

I tried the door, but it wouldn't open. I glanced up at the strange decorations, and then back over at the cat, which was standing and staring at me. Before I could ask, the cat said "Why don"t you ask them?" It nodded its head to the left. I looked, and I saw a dark line of people, both men and women, walking towards the front of the house. They were dressed in very old-style clothing, looking like wealthy gentry from three centuries ago.

As they approached the house, it seemed as though a spotlight fell upon them, lighting up their pale, sweaty faces and their stringy hair. They all seemed to be intoxicated, bordering on hysterical, and the lead man had a long pole with what looked like Bull"s Horns mounted on it. Some of the women were carrying poles carved like phalluses, and others had brooms, which they waved in the air. They all stopped before the front steps of the house, facing the door, and began chanting in a loud, single voice:

"There are horns above the table, and horns above the door!
Three horseshoes in their place, and hard planks for the floor!
The hearth is dark, and wind the voice,
In the house of the family of the old faith!"



They wouldn't stop chanting this; they bellowed it over and over. Some of the women screamed it; one woman fainted, sending some of the others into laughing fits. These people didn't seem to notice me, and I watched them with wonder for a few minutes.

Then I turned around, and suddenly gripped by my own strange hysteria, started screaming the words of their song. I didn't know it by heart; I just yelled the words that I did remember. I started dancing around the porch, stumbling over the words and my own feet, and doing my best to ignore the white cat, who had started laughing at my antics.

The porch went quiet, and the door swung open. The revelers were gone; it was dark again, and I was alone. I could see the cat"s white tail disappearing beyond the door. I followed it in, and closed the door behind me.

It seemed to me like I was stepping into a 1930"s black and white movie; the air inside this room even had film grain static. I looked around, and the room flickered, and became "colorized" again. It became still and rich in dark browns and reds, and long shadows.

The great room had become eerily alive; time seemed to have reversed itself, and old furnishings had re-appeared, as well as dark-framed paintings. The house was full of activity; I could hear people laughing and talking distantly through the walls.

The front room was still dark, and the fireplace was not lit, but the mantle was covered with beeswax candles and lamps, burning low, but still casting a soft glow onto my face and the large painting above the hearth. The painting was spectacular; it was of three horsemen in nighttime forest scene. They were all darkly clothed, and the rider in the center had a bow, with an arrow nocked, the string drawn back, and a rich golden aura radiating about his head. The man to the left of him had a long golden staff with two serpents circling around it, and the man to his right had a bright lantern in his hand. These three figures had shadow-obscured faces, and the full moon was visible in the painting"s dark blue sky. A brass plaque on the lower part of the frame, under the painting, said

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