brother’s, my half-brother’s, wheelchair, and on each of them was printed the name of one of the many horses we had seen on our visits to the racecourse. I myself was quite familiar with these names: Avatara, Royal Troubadour, Hallview Spirit, Mechanical Harry T, and so on. Then I noticed that there was a trail of these torn pieces of paper which seemed to lead away from the wheelchair and toward the front door. I followed them outside the house, where I found a few more fragments of old racing programs out on the porch. But the trail ended even before I reached the sidewalk, the small scraps of paper having been dispersed by the brisk winds of a cold September day. After investigating for some time, I could find nothing to indicate what had become of my brother – that is, my half-brother – and nor could anyone else. No explanation by any agency or person ever sufficiently illuminated the reason for or method of his disappearance.
It was not long after this incident that, for the first time in my life, I went alone to the racecourse which my brother and I had visited together on so many previous occasions. There I watched the horses come parading out onto the track for each race from first to last.
Following the final race of the day, as the horses were leaving the track to return to the area where they were kept in barns, I saw that one of these animals, a roan stallion, had eyes that were the palest and most peculiar shade of gray. When this particular horse passed the spot where I was standing, these eyes turned upon me, staring directly into my own eyes in a way that seemed bitter and thoroughly brutish and which conveyed to me the sense of something unusual, something truly demonic that I could never bring myself to name.
V. THE PHENOMENAL FRENZY
For a time I had been looking to buy a house in which, barring unforeseen developments, I was planning to live out the rest of my life. During this period of house-searching, I found myself considering properties that were increasingly distant from those nearest to them, until ultimately my search for a house in which to live out the rest of my life took place entirely in remote areas miles from the most out-of-the-way towns. I myself was sometimes surprised at the backroad landscapes in which I ventured to investigate some old place where a real estate agent had sent me or upon which I simply happened in the course of wandering farther and farther from any kind of developed region, or even one that had the least proximity to other houses.
It was while driving my car through one of these backroad landscapes, on a windy November afternoon, that I discovered the sort of isolated house which at that point was the only conceivable place where I could live out the rest of my life with any chance of being at peace in the world. Although this two-story frame structure stood in a relatively level and austere backroad landscape, with a few bare trees and a ruined water tower intervening between it and the dull autumnal horizon, I did not become aware of its presence until I had nearly passed it by. There was no sign of landscaping immediately surrounding the house, only the same grayish scrub grass that covered the ground everywhere else in the area as far as the eye could see. Yet the house itself seemed relatively new in its construction, and was not exactly the type of run-down place in which I expected to live out the rest of my life in decayed seclusion.
I have already mentioned that it was a windy day, and, as I stood contemplating that spectacularly isolated house, the atmosphere of that vast backroad landscape became almost cyclonic. Furthermore, the sky was beginning to darken at the edges of the horizon, even though there were no clouds to be seen and several hours remained until the approach of twilight. As the force of the winds grew stronger, the only other features in that backroad landscape – the few bare trees and the ruined water tower – seemed to be
It was not long after this incident that, for the first time in my life, I went alone to the racecourse which my brother and I had visited together on so many previous occasions. There I watched the horses come parading out onto the track for each race from first to last.
Following the final race of the day, as the horses were leaving the track to return to the area where they were kept in barns, I saw that one of these animals, a roan stallion, had eyes that were the palest and most peculiar shade of gray. When this particular horse passed the spot where I was standing, these eyes turned upon me, staring directly into my own eyes in a way that seemed bitter and thoroughly brutish and which conveyed to me the sense of something unusual, something truly demonic that I could never bring myself to name.
V. THE PHENOMENAL FRENZY
For a time I had been looking to buy a house in which, barring unforeseen developments, I was planning to live out the rest of my life. During this period of house-searching, I found myself considering properties that were increasingly distant from those nearest to them, until ultimately my search for a house in which to live out the rest of my life took place entirely in remote areas miles from the most out-of-the-way towns. I myself was sometimes surprised at the backroad landscapes in which I ventured to investigate some old place where a real estate agent had sent me or upon which I simply happened in the course of wandering farther and farther from any kind of developed region, or even one that had the least proximity to other houses.
It was while driving my car through one of these backroad landscapes, on a windy November afternoon, that I discovered the sort of isolated house which at that point was the only conceivable place where I could live out the rest of my life with any chance of being at peace in the world. Although this two-story frame structure stood in a relatively level and austere backroad landscape, with a few bare trees and a ruined water tower intervening between it and the dull autumnal horizon, I did not become aware of its presence until I had nearly passed it by. There was no sign of landscaping immediately surrounding the house, only the same grayish scrub grass that covered the ground everywhere else in the area as far as the eye could see. Yet the house itself seemed relatively new in its construction, and was not exactly the type of run-down place in which I expected to live out the rest of my life in decayed seclusion.
I have already mentioned that it was a windy day, and, as I stood contemplating that spectacularly isolated house, the atmosphere of that vast backroad landscape became almost cyclonic. Furthermore, the sky was beginning to darken at the edges of the horizon, even though there were no clouds to be seen and several hours remained until the approach of twilight. As the force of the winds grew stronger, the only other features in that backroad landscape – the few bare trees and the ruined water tower – seemed to be
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