| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Pocket Diary Found in the Snow by Grace Isabel Colbron and Augusta Groner: and then carefully smoothed out again. After looking at these
papers, Muller replaced them in the cover of the notebook. The book
itself was strongly perfumed with the same odour which had exhaled
from the handkerchief.
The detective did not begin his reading in that part of the book
which followed the mysterious title, as the commissioner had done.
He began instead at the very first words.
"Ah! she is still young," he murmured, when he had read the first
lines. "Young, in easy circumstances, happy and contented."
These first pages told of pleasure trips, of visits from and to good
friends, of many little events of every-day life. Then came some
|
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft: hooves nor claws. When the thing breathed, its tail and tentacles
rhythmically changed colour, as if from some circulatory cause
normal to the non-human greenish tinge, whilst in the tail it
was manifest as a yellowish appearance which alternated with a
sickly grayish-white in the spaces between the purple rings. Of
genuine blood there was none; only the foetid greenish-yellow
ichor which trickled along the painted floor beyond the radius
of the stickiness, and left a curious discoloration behind it.
As the presence of the three men seemed to rouse the dying thing,
it began to mumble without turning or raising its head. Dr Armitage
made no written record of its mouthings, but asserts confidently
The Dunwich Horror |
