And Then There's John Bellairs

So, while I think Lovecraft is interesting as a mythmaker but not a v. good writer, and Clark Ashton Smith brilliant but admittedly an acquired taste,* I think the late John Bellairs, at his best (i.e., THE FACE IN THE FROST) can best even C.A.S.  Bellairs' vocabulary is much simpler, but he was a master of using detail to evoke a sense of nightmares. And I mean that literally: I've had nightmares after reading Bellairs, which has never been the case with HPL or even CAS. Here's a particularly good example of how he draws on common experience to build sinister effect:

It did not look haunted, especially at noon,

this crowded, textured, interwoven wood. 

[He] saw every shade of green, from light,

bleached, papery, yellow-green to a dark, wet, 

inky green that was almost black. Willows,

poplars, maples, oaks, and stubby kinked

mulberry trees. As he crossed the little clearing,

he noticed that the wood -- at least the part of

it that he saw -- was surrounded by a loose

fence of closely planted wooden poles

tipped with spear blades and linked by three

tiers of reddish iron chains. Nothing that a man

might not break down in a few minutes, but 

it might keep something in . . . 

Once he was actually inside the forest and 

the oiled gate was shut behind him, [he]

knew what was wrong. There are times 

when you feel you hear doors slamming 

in the distance, voices calling your name;

you see blurred things, far away or very 

close up, that look like people until you 

focus on them. That was the trouble. The

whole place seemed slightly out of focus,

very slightly off. It was as if you were half

asleep. There was a buzzing in [his] ears,

and he had to stare at a tree for several seconds

before it looked like a tree and not a leaning

furry shadow. . . A glass bell was ringing

somewhere deep, deep in the forest. An icy

green glass bell ridged with frost, trembling

on a green willow branch.

--John Bellairs, THE FACE IN THE FROST (1969), Chapter Five [The Empty Forest].

currently reading: THE WALKER IN THE WASTE [Pagan P. CoC campaign], AT THE BACK OF THE NORTH WIND (the only Geo. MacDonald fantasy I've not read)
current audiobook: DREAMS OF TERROR AND DEATH: THE DREAM CYCLE OF H. P. LOVECRAFT [2013]



*anyone who cd write a play called THE DEAD WILL CUCKOLD YOU is definitely not for everyone