Sunday, April 23, 2023

"Like one that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread...."

....I had been for a walk in the lane that led from my refuge in the direction of another fallen, forlorn old estate, whose manor was now in craggy ruins, and I thought I should like a closer look at it. But it was dusk, later than I had supposed, and I saw I would not make my destination before darkness unless I could find a short cut across the fields. After a while, I espied a gap in the hedgerow and a faded footpath leading from this into woodland and, as I thought I could see, out from this towards the ruin. Yet I never got so far. For, when I passed through the gap in the hedge, I suddenly felt a chill pass over me, and a dizzying blackness seize hold of my brow and momentarily blot my eyes. I wavered on my feet. I have had attacks like these when I have been poring over lower bookshelves and risen too quickly: yet never in open country on a gentle summer's evening. I clutched at the prickly hedge for support and stepped back onto the road; and it passed. But I thought it better not to go on. Even as I made my way back to the Oast House, I perceived that this wave of fever had not quite left me, for I kept on thinking I heard a pattering behind me, as of some large, loping animal; yet when I looked around me, there was nothing to see.





"The Inner Sentinel"

The Nightfarers by Mark Valentine

(2020, Tartarus Press)


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