Published posthumously in Singers in the Shadows, 1970, likely written in 1929-30

“There stands, close by a dim, wolf-hunted wood,

A tavern like a monster, brooding thing.

About its sullen gables no birds sing.

Oft a lone traveler, when the moon is blood,

Lights from his horse in quest of sleep and meal.

His footfalls fade within and sound no more;

He comes not forth; but from the secret door

Bearing a grisly burden, shadows steal.”

“By day, ‘neath trees whose silent, green leaves glisten,

The tavern crouches, hating day and light.

A lurking vampire, terrible and lean;

Sometimes behind its windows may be seen

Vague leprous faces, haggard, fungus-white,

That peer and start and ever seem to listen.”

Throughout Howard’s work meanders a thread of dread where civilization is concerned, a sense that settling in a place made by Man carries a curse about it; the more imposing the structure the more it stands conducive to the seduction of men into degeneracy. Howard clearly employs wolves and werewolves as vengeful spirits of the natural order and sorcerers and vampires as horrors twisted out of human form by the corrupting weight of civilization and its shadow-casting edifices.