81. The Trap
82. The Tree On The Hill
83. The Unnamable
84. Waste Paper: A Poem of Profound Insignificance
85. Notes On Writing Weird Fiction
86. The Whisperer in Darkness
87. The White Ship
88. Winged Death
89. The Curse of Yig
The Trap
by H. P. Lovecraft & Henry S. Whitehead
Written late 1931
It was on a certain Thursday morning in December that the whole thing
began with that unaccountable motion I thought I saw in my antique
Copenhagen mirror. Something, it seemed to me, stirred - something
reflected in the glass, though I was alone in my quarters. I paused and
looked intently, then, deciding that the effect must be a pure illusion,
resumed the interrupted brushing of my hair.
I had discovered the old mirror, covered with dust and cobwebs, in an
outbuilding of an abandoned estate-house in Santa Cruz's sparsely settled
Northside territory, and had brought it to the United States from the
Virgin Islands. The venerable glass was dim from more than two hundred
years' exposure to a tropical climate, and the graceful ornamentation
along the top of the gilt frame had been badly smashed. I had had the
detached pieces set back into the frame before placing it in storage with
my other belongings.
Now, several years later, I was staying half as a guest and half as a
tutor at the private school of my old friend Browne on a windy Connecticut
hillside - occupying an unused wing in one of the dormitories, where I had
two rooms and a hallway to myself. The old mirror, stowed securely in
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