A man sets out one bright April morning to meet his fiancée at a familiar spot along a rugged, boulder-strewn ridge. The landscape, usually vivid and warmly picturesque, transforms as he nears his meeting place. Without warning, the sky shifts from clear blue to a sinister brown and then to a deep, funeral purple, while the familiar pines and oaks become twisted, deformed, and almost demonic in appearance. The ground, once soft and welcoming, now bears an eerie layer of dust, marked with bizarre, slender footprints that hint at a presence both alien and otherworldly. As he advances along a broader path, the contrast between the once-familiar natural beauty and the mounting, grotesque strangeness grows stark. The trees seem to animate into hideous shapes, their forms reminiscent of leering hags or tortured figures writhing in eternal agony. Monolithic boulders looming nearby evoke memories of ancient tombstones with indecipherable inscriptions, suggesting the presence of an ageless mystery that defies time. The transformation reaches its climax when he discovers a circular field encircled by ruined, unidentifiable monuments and dense, shadowy pines. Here, the footprints reappear in greater numbers and a low, ominous rattling begins from the direction of the trees. Emerging first is a solitary skeletal figure carrying a tiny infant’s skeleton; its approach is marked by an eerie, graceful, almost ritualistic stride. One after another, more such figures appear—each identical in their macabre, spectral nature—until he witnesses eight skeletal apparitions, all carrying the semblance of a cryptic mission or ancient curse. Their procession, silent yet laden with malevolent purpose, confirms that these are not random manifestations but heralds of a long-forgotten horror. In a moment that solidifies his terror, a lone skeleton approaches him without the infant and reaches out with a decaying hand, tugging at his sleeve as if beckoning him to join the procession or share in the blighted fate suggested by their appearance. Overwhelmed by an intense, paralyzing dread born of inexplicable forces from a realm beyond mortal understanding, he collapses into unconsciousness. When he eventually awakens, his fiancée is beside him, her face marked with concern and confusion. The extraordinary, nightmare-like events he experienced are left unspoken, suspended in the ambiguous space between waking life and a terror that may have been nothing more than a lucid nightmare or a glimpse into an ancient, supernatural reality.
By Clark Ashton Smith · First published 1935 · Genre: Weird Fiction, Horror, Dark Fantasy