I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air;–Lord Byron (Darkness)
“The sun was dying, and its blood spattered the sky as it crept into its sepulcher behind the hills. The keening wind sent the dry, fallen leaves scurrying toward the west, as though hastening them to the funeral of the sun.
“Nuts!” said Henderson to himself, and stopped thinking.”–Robert Bloch (The Cloak)
“The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute.” “They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” “I smiled,—for what had I to fear?”—Edgar Allan Poe (The Tell-Tale Heart)
Death was in that poisonous wave,
And in its gulf a fitting grave
For him who thence could solace bring
To his lone imagining—
Whose solitary soul could make
An Eden of that dim lake.–Edgar Allan Poe (The Lake)
The surviving members of the family came severally every few minutes to the casket and wept above the placid features beneath the glass. This did them no good; it did no good to John Mortonson; but in the presence of death reason and philosophy are silent.–Ambrose Bierce (John Mortonson’s Funeral)
“That double curve folding back on itself with the foot uplifted—was it not the dragon of the box? She wiped her eyes, blaming an overstrained nervous system, and looked again. But surely those were scales!” —Elizabeth Walter (The Tibetan Box)
“Her voice was the voice that women have,
Who plead for their heart’s desire.
She came—she came—and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor,
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.”–Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (The Witch)
“Where’s…the…blood?!
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the aroma of cloves and cayenne kicking up spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, the blood—the Life, has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)
“Where’s…the…blood?
The music—especially that fiery jazz, the cries of laughter, and the smell of cloves and cayenne emanating from spicy foods, have kept the blood flowing in New Orleans for hundreds of years. For hundreds of years, Life has flowed down the mighty Mississippi into the dark rues, and alleys of the Quarter. And…on more than one occasion, in the city that never sleeps, a fool or the foolhardy has perished.”—Jeffrey LeBlanc (The Devil of Black Bayou (Comedic Short)
“There was a deep soft thundering in his ears, a rosy dazzlement in his eyes. Somehow the hut appeared to expand, to change luminously about him. He hardly recognized its squalid furnishings, its litter of baleful oddments, on which a torrid splendor was shed by the black candles, tipped with ruddy fire, that towered and swelled gigantically into the softgloom His blood burned as with the throbbing flame of the candles.”—Clark Ashton Smith (Mother of Toads)
“Juliette entered her bedroom, smiling, and a thousand Juliettes smiled back at her.”–Robert Bloch (A Toy For Juliette)
“Well, when he hopped over the fence, the bag caught on the top strand of wire and fell back in the parking lot. I picked it up later and what do you suppose I found inside?’
“I have no idea” I told him. “Don’t keep me in suspense!”
“Dirt!” He answered. “Just plain dirt. Earth dirt.”—Joseph Payne Brennan (Who Was He?)
“Omar Khayyam was right: Hell is the reflection of a soul burning.”–John H. Green (Seven Men in a Tank)
“As you know, most of us, dreaming, are, at the back of our consciousness, aware that we are dreaming. No matter how horrible the dream may become, we know that it is a dream, and thus insanity or possible death is staved off. But in this particular dream, there is no such knowledge. I tell you it is so vivid, so complete in every detail, that I wonder sometimes if that is not my real existence and this a dream! But no; for then I should have been dead years ago.”–Robert E. Howard (The Dream Snake)
“She’d turn her gaze briefly out at the frosted marshes and the drifts of snow which glittered on the beaches and estuaries. Then, those furnaced, ice-blue eyes returned to the sea with the fiercest intensity in her gaze. ”–Jeffrey LeBlanc (Curse of the Sea Witch)
Jeffrey LeBlanc 