Robert Arthur 20 min read

Twenty years unchanged, Sam Kee's little Mott Street shop still holds its dusty jars of ginseng and tigers' whiskers, as a modern couple, sure the old gods hold no power over them, step back inside.

Robert Arthur's 1954 story is an atmospheric fantasy-horror tale of ancient powers and modern skepticism. Sharp, eerie, well-turned. Read it for a chilling story where a couple's confidence that the old gods are nothing to fear proves, quietly and terribly, misplaced.

In its time

Published in 1954, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

20 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).

Illustrated by

Ernest Kurt Barth