The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories

by Robert W. Chambers

This is the thing that troubles me, for I cannot forget Carcosa where black stars hang in the heavens; where the shadows of men’s thoughts lengthen in the afternoon, when the twin suns sink into the Lake of Hali; and my mind will bear forever the memory of the Pallid Mask.

“What is all this damnable jugglery!”

There are ghosts of sound which return to haunt long after sound is dead. It was these voiceless spectres of a voice long dead that stirred the transparent silence, intoning toneless tones. I think I make myself clear.

There is something in a silent egg which moves one’s deeper emotions—something solemn in its embryotic inertia, something awesome in its featureless immobility.