Horror Stories for Halloween 2017

[Luke Blanchard]

This year I thought I'd celebrate Halloween by posting a daily comics story. Please feel free to make any contribution to the thread that fits. Reviews of comics, books, movies are all fine.

Any story posted must be in the public domain. If you post images please upload them from your computer instead of hotlinking. And if you write a review please either avoid spoilers, or put them in a separate paragraph headed by a spoiler warning. My own rule of thumb is what happens after the half-way mark is a spoiler.

My comments on the stories I post will include spoilers. They will always be placed immediately after the story.

2016's thread is here.

This post displaced the thread John Dunbar re-reads AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (AF 15, ASM 1-50) from the homepage.

[Ronald Morgan]

Wow. Don't know what happened there. Surprised I didn't put out something on the 31st.

[Ronald Morgan]

XIII. Hesperia

The winter sunset, flaming beyond spires

And chimneys half-detached from this dull sphere,

Opens great gates to some forgotten year

Of elder splendours and divine desires.

Expectant wonders burn in those rich fires,

A row of sphinxes where the way leads clear

Towards walls and turrets quivering to far lyres.

It is the land where beauty's meaning flowers;

Where every unplaced memory has a source;

Where the great river Time begins its course

Down the vast voice in starlit streams of hours

Dreams bring us close - but ancient lore repeats

That human tread has never soiled these streets.

[Ronald Morgan]

XIV. Star-Winds

It is a certain hour of twilight glooms;

Mostly in autumn, when the star-wind pours

Down hilltop streets, deserted out-of-doors,

But shewing early lamplight from snug rooms.

The dead leaves rush in strange, fantastic twists,

And chimney-smoke whirls round with alien grace,

Heeding geometries of outer space,

While Fomalhaut peers through southward mists.

This is the hour when moonstruck poets know

What fungi sprout in Yuggoth, and what scents

And tints of flowers fill Nithon's continenents,

Such as in no poor earthly garden blow.

Yet for each dream these winds to us convey,

A dozen more of ours they sweep away!

[Ronald Morgan]

XV. Antarktos

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly

Of the black cone amid the polar waste;

Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,

By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.

Hitler no living earth-shapes takes their courses,

And only pale auroras and faint suns

Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources

Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder

What tricky mound of Nature's build they spied;

But the bird told of vaster parts that under

The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.

God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew

Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!

[Ronald Morgan]

XVI. The Window

The house was old, with tangled wings outthrown,

Of which no one could ever half keep track,

And in a small room somewhat near the back

Was an odd window sealed with ancient stone.

There, in a dream-plagued childhood, quite alone

I used to go, where night reigned vague and black;

Parting the cobwebs with a curious lack

Of fear, and with a wonder each time grown.

One later day I brought the masons there

T find what view my dim forbears had shunned,

But as they pierced the stone, a rush of air

Burst from the alien voids that yawned beyond.

They fled - but I peered through and found unrolled

All the wild worlds of which my dreams had told.

[Ronald Morgan]

That should be "Hither" on line five.
 
Ronald Morgan said:

XV. Antarktos

Deep in my dream the great bird whispered queerly

Of the black cone amid the polar waste;

Pushing above the ice-sheet lone and drearly,

By storm-crazed aeons battered and defaced.

Hitler no living earth-shapes takes their courses,

And only pale auroras and faint suns

Glow on that pitted rock, whose primal sources

Are guessed at dimly by the Elder Ones.

If men should glimpse it, they would merely wonder

What tricky mound of Nature's build they spied;

But the bird told of vaster parts that under

The mile-deep ice-shroud crouch and brood and bide.

God help the dreamer whose mad visions shew

Those dead eyes set in crystal gulfs below!