Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 127: what you’re looking at

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

a Sahabhetont of Cancin | = by LAabrote Bierce < Robert Chambers, Algernon Blackwood, and Ambrose Bierce were the three writers who planted the seeds at the turn of this century for the American weird story type that blossomed so abundantly in the last two decades. The theme which made Lovecraft and his school famous, the conception of a pan- theon of “Elder Gods’ and a mind-chillin g cosmogony depicted in forbidden writings, can be found to have its origins in the works of these three men. The grim, almost occultish, tale told here bears out Buierce’s role in this eldritch gardening. emmme OR THERE be divers sorts of death —some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. This commonly occurreth only in solitude (such is God’s will) and, none seeing the end, we say the man is lost, or gone on a long journey— which indeed he hath; but sometimes it hath happened in sight of many, as abundant testimony showeth. In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigor for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.” Pondering these words of Hali (whom God rest) and questioning their full meaning, as one who, having an intimation, yet doubts if there be not some- thing behind, other than that which he has discerned, I noted not whither I had strayed until a sudden chill wind striking my face revived in me a sense of my surroundings. I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass, which rustled and whistled in the autumn wind with heaven knows what mysterious and disquieting sug- gestion. Protruded at long intervals above it, stood strangely shaped and somber-colored rocks, which seemed to have an understanding with one an- other and to exchange looks of uncomfortable significance, as if they had reared their heads to watch the issue of some foreseen event. A few blasted trees here and there appeared.as leaders in this malevolent conspiracy of silent expectation. | | 123