The House on the Borderland

pposite to a vast rift, opening into the mountains. Through this, I was borne, moving at no great speed. On either side of me, huge, scarped walls of rocklike substance rose

last, I saw, ahead, a deep, red glow, that told me

founded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles and occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built apparently of green jade. Yet, in itself, it was not the discovery of the bui

What does it mean?' and I was unable to make answer, even out of the depths of my imagination. I seemed capable only of wonder and fear. For a time longer, I gazed, noting conti

hat sort of a place I had come. The arena, for so I have termed it, appeared a perfect circle of about ten to twelve miles in diameter, the House, as I h

nk that this same abominable stillness was more trying to me than anything that I had so far seen or imagined. I was looking

gh unknown eternities. Slowly, the monster became plainer to me; and then, suddenly, my gaze sprang from it to something further off and higher among the crags. For a long minute, I gazed, fearfully. I was strangely conscious of something not altogether unfamiliar-as though something stirred in the back of my mind. The thing was black, and had four grotesque arms. The features showed indistinctly, 'round th

od Set, or Seth, the Destroyer of Souls. With the knowledge, there came a great sweep of questioning-'Two of the-!' I stopped, and endeavored to think. Things beyond my imagination

under a great peak, a shape of greyness. I wondered I had not seen it earlier, and then remembered I had not yet viewed that porti

orm, save for an unclean, half-animal face, that looked out, vilely, from somewhere about its middle. And then I saw others-there were hundreds of them. They seemed to grow

deny any further attempt to describe them. And I-I was filled with a terrible sense of overwhelming horror and fear and repugnance; yet, spite of these, I wondered exceedi

entness, my mind began to reach out to fresh conclusions. There was something about them, an indescribable sort of silent vitality that suggested, to my broadening consciousness, a state of life-in-death-a something that was by no means life, as we understand it; but rather an inhuman

ted out of the semi-darkness and began to move slowly across the arena-toward the House. At this, I gave up all thoughts of those prodigious Shapes above me-and could only stare, frightenedly, at

ing. Then, all at once, something caught my vision, something that came 'round one of the huge buttresses of the House, and so into full view. It was a gigantic thing, and moved with a curious lope, go

brously 'round the building, stopping as it came to each window to peer in and shake at the bars, with which-as in this house-they were protected;

tly. In an instant, it had covered half the distance that lay between. And still, I was borne helplessly to meet it. Only a hundred yards, and the brutish ferocity of the giant face numbed me with a feeling of unmitigated horror. I could have screamed, in the supremeness of my fear; and then, in the very moment of my extremity and despair, I became conscious that I was looking down upon the arena, from a rapidly increasing height.

floating, alone, afar in the redness. At a tremendous distance below, the arena showed, dimly; with

rface, in the direction of the ring-shaped sun, there showed a confused blur. I looked toward it, in

endous. With awakened interest, I watched it carefully, noting its strange boiling and glowing. Then, in a moment, the whole thing grew dim and unreal, and so passed out of sight. Much amazed, I glanced down to the Plain from which I was still rising. Thus, I received a fresh surprise.