And waving in a dusky dragon light
Great moths whose wings unholy tapers char.
Red memory on memory, tier on tier, Builds up a tower, time and space to span;
Through world on world I rise, and sphere on sphere,
To star-shot gulfs of lunacy and fear— Black screaming ages never dreamed by man.’
–Robert E. Howard (Babel)
She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz’d and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes So kiss’d to sleep.
And there we slumber’d on the moss,
And there I dream’d, ah woe betide!—
The latest dream I ever dream’d On the cold hill side.’ –John Keats (La Belle Dame Sans Merci)
‘There were no marks of violence on the body; only that expression of horrific revulsion at unspeakable things.’ –(Amelia Reynolds Long)
As he clambered over the rocks he was suddenly conscious of a strange sensation, as though keen eyes were focused upon him — eyes that watched and warned! Vaguely in his mind rose up the gaunt face of his uncle, Michael Leigh, the deep-set eyes glowing. But swiftly this was gone, and he found himself before a deeper niche of blackness in the cliff face. Into it he knew he must go.–robert Bloch & Henry Kuttner (The Black Kiss)
‘It was a great gray-black hood of horror moving over the floor of the sea. It slid through the soft ooze like a monstrous mantle of slime obscenely animated with questing life.’ –Joseph Payne Brennan (Slime)
I cast a glance and resigned to dive in anyway. I thought,
‘It’s better to face those teeth or any of the creatures slithering out there in the smoke and abysmal waters of the bayou, than to be burned alive.’
–Jeffrey LeBlanc (For the Love of a Phantom)
‘Between him and the moonlight was the black outline of the curious bunched head…Then there was a figure in the room. Dry earth rattled on the floor.’ –M. R. James (There Was a Man Who Dwelt by a Churchyard)
I am still alive! I am still alive!
But I am not the same
You can see the truth
Oh, immortal soul no one is to blame
Fate has played its part
In matters of the heart
— Jeffrey LeBlanc (For the Love of a Phantom)
Here they were: the drunks and the sinners, the gambling men
and the grifters, the big-time spenders, the skirt chasers, and all
the jolly crew. They knew where they were going, of course, but
they didn’t seem to be particularly concerned at the moment.
The blinds were drawn on the windows, yet it was light inside,
and they were all sitting around and singing and passing the
bottle and laughing it up, telling their jokes and bragging their
brags, just the way Daddy used to sing about them in the old
song.
“Mighty nice traveling companions,” Martin said. “Why, I’ve
never seen such a pleasant bunch of people. I mean, they seem
to be really enjoying themselves!”
“Sorry,” the conductor told him. “I’m afraid things may not
be quite so enjoyable once we pull into that Depot Way Down
Yonder.”
–Robert Bloch (That Hell-Bound Train)
“Take the blood in my veins Madeline!” I ripped the sleeves of my shirt and opened my veins. “Take this heart in my chest! But live damn you. For the world is a darker place without you in it.”–Jeffrey LeBlanc (For the Love of a Phantom)
‘Thunder shook the ground and thunder shook my heart,
But no storm cloud was above to make the heavens part
Then I saw the nightmarish monstrosity–a creature stride across my path
Lumbering as an oak, creaking as the pines with two legs it hath
I stopped and stared at the towering shadow that stood before me
Ancient was the swaying beast who shook earth and topped tree.’ —Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Shadow on the Mountain)
Away with us he’s going,
The solemn-eyed:
He’ll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world’s more full of weeping than he can understand.–William Butler Yeats (The Stolen Child)
“I am a vampire,”said the stranger.
Madness. I turned to flee, but the voice pursued me.
“Yes, I am a vampire,” he said. “And…so are you!”
–Robert Bloch (The Bat Is My Brother)
With blood rilling heavily upon their faces, with the somnolent, vigilant, implacable and eyeless Shape at their heels, herding them on, restraining them when they tottered at the brink, the three began their second descent of the road that went down forever to a night-bound Avernus. –Clark Ashton Smith (The Dweller in the Gulf)
‘It’s not the kind of story that the columnists like to print; it’s not the yarn press-agents love to tell. When I was still in the Public Relations Department at the studio, they wouldn’t let me break it. I knew better than to try, for no paper would print such a tale. We publicity men must present Hollywood as a gay place; a world of glamor and star-dust. We capture only the light, but underneath the light there must always be shadows. I’ve always known that—it’s been my job to gloss over those shadows for years—but the events of which I speak from a disturbing pattern too strange to be withheld. The shadow of these incidents is not human.’
—Robert Bloch (Return to the Sabbath)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 