The white gulls wheeled above the cliffs, the air was slashed with foam,
The long tides moaned along the strand when Solomon Kane came home.
He walked in silence strange and dazed through the little Devon town,
His gaze, like a ghost’s come back to life, roamed up the streets and down.–Robert E. Howard
I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.
–Thomas Hardy (The Shadow on the Stone)
Night, black as pitch and filled with the wailing of a dead wind, sank like a shapeless specter into the oily waters of the Indian Ocean, leaving a great gray expanse of sullen sea, empty except for a solitary speck that rose and dropped in the long swell.–Hugh B. Cave (Stragella)
And freezing, the Owl never leaving, still is staring, still is staring
Perched upon Great Pan’s limbs just above my swamp shore;
Perched, twisted head, and stares as the dead to distant Stygian moors,
His Erebus eyes, become gilded fireflies, flickering to flame seething, possibly dreaming,
Whilst leprous moon overhead wakes the forgotten dead in shadows before;
And as I lie waiting my flickering shadow anticipating those ghostly shadows before
Cackles the Owl “Katina” evermore!”–Jeffrey LeBlanc
The Pirate slaughtered the captain’s maid;
(Antoine Valterre became the Devil’s king.)
And her broken heart rotted holding the blade.
(A vampire’s thirst is a deadly thing.)–JL
And when thy heart drummed its horrid beat, dreadful the writhing of its legs and
the gnashing of its teeth?-JM
Curious hands desecrated the graves of the undead;
(Antoine Valterre became the Devil’s king.)
Till they found a silver coffin to their dread.
Fascination became terror when they opened the lid,
Eyes fluorescent and fangs sanguine that box had hid.
(A vampire’s thirst is a deadly thing.)–JL
Jeffrey LeBlanc 