The elements had rendered an abandoned house nearly indistinguishable from its woodland setting. The ruin had been built of timber planks, now weathered dark; and no windowpanes or doors stood obstacle to wind and water. Lime-green and peat-brown mosses feathered the whole of its front surface. Mouldy feelers ran over its windowsills and doorjambs. I had no reason to tarry before it, even less to pass the central portal. Only obstinate curiosity justified an approach to that undisturbed, empty shell rotting in the woods. The remnants of the front porch looked as if they would hold my weight. I took a short step to the dusky interior.

There is no way to say how it happened, but my feet never caught hold of the floor. I was swept in a moment up the facing staircase as if pulled there on a rug. I staggered in astonishment, then fearful, fell against a wall when I saw that the stairs had gone. A corridor gaped in their place. Worse yet for my pounding heart, the wall gave way beneath my leaning shoulder, casting me into a chamber where bitter cold snatched at my lungs and stung my cheeks. Stacks of painted chairs filled the room. Light, crystalline snow blew through; and the moon, from mountainous scenery at the window, mirrored my uncomprehending gaze. Rubble on the floor, detritus from the broken wall blackened the rime at my feet. Closeted air rushed past as if the place had been sealed for ages, went fleeing the tomb of skeletal, finely-carved chairs.

I lunged back into the hallway, attempted a few faltering steps beneath an archway, and then shrank back at a huge, stone stele in my path. I knew rock to be opaque, yet the view behind the thick slab was apparent, as if observed through a remote pair of eyes. Every part of the surface behind the granite was carpeted in winking, dull black. Legions of carapaced insects slithered on the walls, crept on the floor, and ran along the ceiling. Their mad clicking sent bumping waves in every direction, as across a pit of tarred pebbles, and had revulsion shuddering through me. A shutter opened behind, revealing jet glitters in streaks of light where a crone’s hand gripped the window. I shut my eyes to catch my senses in the archway, to spit the dust from between my teeth.

Calm descended, spreading fascination like a blanket over my brain. Something that could only be called a soundless voice slowly was moving near. Like a creature made of currents, it sifted, shaped the powder in the air into gliding forms. The first discernible figure was a woman's, in trailing robes or veil. Animals hinted into presence under her hypnotic spinning- pigs and cats, cocks and apes, thin flanks and broad backs. Then desperate, drowning men tore vainly to catch at her thighs. Caustic dust seared my sight, and clogged my throat in a sulphurous burn. I coughed up hot mucus that smoked behind me on the floor as I tried to retrace my steps.

Gasping on a ledge, I swayed for a second before letting myself fall out of that place. The perspective made no sense; my eyes reported that my advancing, outstretched hand split in two to curve behind my shoulders. The ground below showed an inverted staircase far from the ledge, as though I were about to fall up. The corridor snaked away, turning upon itself like an intestinal sac. In one corner the moon glowed inside the icy room as the chairs radiated within from without. Slipping into a faint, twisting somehow to the side, I found myself halfway through the doorway to the house, marooned upon the broken front porch.

The best I could do was to pull myself away on my back while the crumbling ground beneath seemed to drop from a cliff. The windows and doorway hung over empty space. Blurs of seabirds whirred in the sky. The moss-covered house was barely visible through the trees in the single, backward glimpse I dared take, couldn’t withhold at the end of my run. There had never been a reason to go near that abandoned house. Blind curiosity alone had pushed at me to enter there.