Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 104: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Goblins WM Got You Ls Joln Wichel Here 1s a story that defies easy classification. A fantasy in the New Yorker manner, refreshingly different from the run. of formula, and breezily modern : in its approach. The author is indeed a New Yorker, a resident of Greenwich | Village no less, and the non-conjormity of that famed area has doubtless con- tributed to the off-trail sparkle that highlights many of this author’s pen-name | published tales. : } 3 — | "I SHOULDN'T have happened to a dog. I woke up one night and saw them grinning over the counterpane at me like a row of painted heads off a Coney Island three-sheet. The time was three - o'clock as I could easily see by the luminous hands of my alarm clock. Oddly enough I remained unshocked. They explained later that a sort of preparatory hypnosis had been worked —involving a lot of ground-up vegetable greens I found under my bed every night for a week before and couldn’t up to then account for. I lay quietly and simply stared and they stared back. I was a bit upset, of course, but none of your “crawling feeling down the spine’ stuff. The faces were inhuman, distorted, elongated, squashed, somie nauseating, others merely enough to make one squeamish. And the glow which backgrounded the whole scene took away a lot of the mystery. They had hands and feet—plainly seen —and they didn’t float. | Finally I opened diplomatic negotiations. I said, “Hello.” The faces yawned a trifle, grew misty and jagged, then resumed a solid — appearance. This I found was due to the impact of physical noises on their nervous systems. Being creatures of an order necessarily “other dimensional,” they found it a trifle difficult maintaining what to them was a decent state of appearance. : As soon as the shaking and quaking had stopped and the gargoylish eyes had been popped back into many sockets, a large-headed one goggled fiercely in what was probably intended to be a reassuring smile and said, “Teach us to speak English.” 100 com ie) books:com