A Night in the Lonesome October

by Roger Zelazny

Why his list of materials required the edge of a green cloak worn by a red-haired lady on this date at midnight and removed while still upon her person, I am uncertain. Magical rotas sometimes strike me as instructions for lunatic scavenger hunts.

“I’ve never met Nightwind. Owls scare me. Besides, I heard he’s pretty closebeaked. Keeps everything close to his feathers, and keeps his pinions to himself.”

If you’ve ever tried turning a crank with your paws you know that it is rough work.

Can't say I have

“Vicar Roberts has become convinced there’s something unnatural in the neighborhood,” he said. “How strange. What might have led him to that belief?” “The bodies with no blood left in them, and the people with anemia, who all seem to have had vivid dreams involving bats. Things like that.”

“‘Creature of the Night,’” he said. “‘Living Blasphemy.’ You’re safe here. You can even have a peach if you’d like.”

leaving the corpse in a copse.

“Hard times do really bring out the revolutionary in a person, don’t they?” “I’ll give you that. Also, sometimes, the cynicism.”