screaming with shocking music. I thought I could at least try to save myself and Erich Zann, though I did not know what powers I was fighting with. At one moment some cold thing touched me, and I screamed, but my scream could not be heard above that viol.
Suddenly, out of the blackness, the bow struck me, and I knew I was close to the player. I felt and touched the back of Zann’s chair and then found and shook his shoulder, trying to bring him to his senses. There was no result. I felt his head and shouted in his ear that we must both run from the unknown things of the night. He did not answer, but continued playing his horrible music, while strange gusts of wind seemed to dance in the darkness of the attic. When my hand touched the old man’s face, I was startled because it was ice-cold and stiff. Then, by some miracle, I found the door and ran wildly away from that glassy-eyed thing in the dark and from that screaming viol.
Running, falling, flying down those endless stairs through the dark house and out into the narrow, steep, and ancient street, then down to the lower streets and the river, across the dark bridge to the broad streets – and I remember that I noticed then that there was no wind, and that the moon was out, and that all the lights of the city twinkled.
Later, I searched and searched, yet I have never been able to find the Rue d’Auseil again. But I am not sorry either for this or for the loss of the handwritten sheets which could have explained the mysterious music of Erich Zann.
The color out of space
West of Arkham the hills rise steeply, and there are valleys with deep, dark woods that no axe has ever cut. On the less steep hillsides there are ancient farms with empty, moss-covered cottages filled with old New England[23] secrets. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. They have come, and tried living there, and then left, and it is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or touched, but because of something that is imagined.
The place is not good for the imagination, and does not bring pleasant dreams at night. It must be the reason why the foreigners went away because old Ammi Pierce has never told them of anything he remembers from the strange days. Ammi, who has been a little strange in the head[24] for years, is the only one who still lives there or who ever talks of those strange days. He dares it only because his house is near the open fields and the main roads.
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