‘Trite and grotesque the plot of the film may have been, but the actor who played the lead had instilled it with ghastly reality. He had been dead; his eyes knew. And the voice was the voice of Lazarus awakened.’–Robert Bloch (Return to the Sabbath)
‘We lay, my love and I
Beneath the weeping willow
But now alone I lie
And weep beside the tree
Singing “Oh willow waly”
By the tree that weeps with me
Singing “Oh willow waly”
Till my lover returns to me
We lay, my love and I
Beneath the weeping willow
But now alone I lie
Oh willow I die
Oh willow I die…’
—George Auric & Paul Dehn (O Willow Waly)
‘I should never have attended Henricus Vanning’s costume ball. Even if the tragedy had not occurred, I would be better off had I refused his invitation that night. Now that I have left New Orleans I can view the episode in saner light, and I know I made a mistake.’
—Robert Bloch (The Secret of Sebek)
Have you ever felt the tread of little feet walking across the top of your skull? Footsteps on your skull, back and forth, back and forth? —Robert Bloch (Enoch)
Then she began to experience what she often
thought of as her “married feeling”—the peculiar
awareness which usually denoted her husband’s unseen
entrance into a room she occupied.”— Robert Bloch (The Hungry House)
“Unquenched, unquenchable,
Around, within, thy heart shall dwell;
Nor ear can hear nor tongue can tell
The tortures of that inward hell!
But first, on earth as vampire sent,
Thy corse shall from its tomb be rent:–Lord Byron (The Vampyre)
“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)
“You asked me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour, and I am the last to deny the impression. What I will do is to relate the most horrible circumstance I ever encountered, and leave it to you to judge whether or not this forms a suitable explanation of my peculiarity.”–H. P. Lovecraft
Vision or nightmare it may have been—vision or nightmare I fervently hope it was—yet it is all that my mind retains of what took place in those shocking hours after we left the sight of men. And why Harley Warren did not return, he or his shade—or some nameless thing I cannot describe—alone can tell.–H. P. Lovecraft
Can Graham Dean stop his California dreaming of the ominous dark sea? Or will he fall prey to the black kiss of the deadly dream weaver–Morella Godolfo? –JL
“A blood-chilling narrative of a ghastly horror that stalked through the crypts beneath the old graveyard.”-WT
“I wonder what he thought,
that wretched, unnamed boy
with his sieve under his arm
and his pockets bulging with
an odd conglomerate of sandy
tourist coins, what he thought
when he saw me lurching at
him like a blind conductor
stretching out his hands over
a lunatic orchestra, what he
thought as the last of the light
fell across my hands, red and
split and shining with their
burden of eyes, what he
thought when the hands made
that sudden, flailing gesture
in the air, just before his head
burst.
I know what I thought.
I thought I had peeked over
the rim of the universe and
into the fires of hell itself.”–Stephen King (I Am The Doorway)
Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell.–Edgar Allan Poe
The creeping introduction of “Fane of the Black Pharaoh” as stated by Weird Tales says:
“Those eyes shone through the shadows; unwinking, unchanging, omniscient in this little world of the dead.”
But…Robert Bloch’s introduction brought more blood and fang:
“Terrible was the fame of Nephren-Ka, and more terrible still was the destiny that Captain Cartaret read on the walls of the red-litten underground corridors.”
