Heaven knows where I'll end up - but it's a safe bet that I'll never be at the top of anything! Nor do I particularly care to be.

But are not the dreams of poets and the tales of travellers notoriously false?

In relating the circumstances which have led to my confinement within this refuge for the demented, I am aware that my present position will create a natural doubt of the authenticity of my narrative.

I was nearly unnerved at my proximity to a nameless thing at the bottom of a pit.

The one test of the really weird (story) is simply this--whether or not there be excited in the reader a profound sense of dread, and of contact with unknown spheres and powers; a subtle attitude of awed listening, as if for the beating of black wings or the scratching of outside shapes and entities on the known universe's utmost rim.

From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.

I have harnessed the shadows that stride from world to world to sow death and madness.