The Color Out of Space by H.P. Lovecraft. Red by Mike Bannett.

West of Arkham, the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut.

There are dark, narrow glens where the trees slope fantastically and where thin brooklets trickle

without ever having caught the glint of sunlight.

On the gentlest slopes there are farms,

ancient and rocky, with squat, moss-coated cottages

brooding eternally over old New England secrets in the Lee of great ledges.

But these are all vacant now, the wide chimneys crumbling, and the shingled sides bulging perilously

beneath low gambrel roofs. The old folk have gone away, and foreigners do not like to live there. French

Canadians have tried it, Italians have tried it, and the Poles have come and

departed. It is not because of anything that can be seen or heard or handled,

but because of something that is imagined. The place is not good for the imagination and does not bring restful dreams at night.

It must be this which keeps the foreigners away, for old Ami Pierce has never told them of anything he recalls from the strange days.

Ami whose head has been a little queer for years is the only one who still remains or whoever talks of the

strange days and he dares to do this because his house is so near the open fields and the travelled roads around Arkham.

There was, once, a road over the hills and through the valleys that ran straight, where

the blasted heath is now. But people ceased to use it, and a new road was laid curving far toward the south. Traces of the old one can still be found amidst the weeds of a returning

wilderness, and some of them will doubtless linger, even when half the hollows are flooded for the new reservoir.

Then the dark woods will be cut down and the blasted heath will slumber far below blue waters whose surface will mirror the sky and ripple in the sun,

and the secrets of the strange days will be one with the deep secrets, one with the hidden law of old ocean, and all the

mystery of primal earth.

When I went into the hills and veils to survey for the new reservoir, they told me the place was evil. They told me this in Arkham, and because that is a very old town full of witch legends I thought the evil

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