Page:Weird Tales Volume 44 Number 7 (1952-11).djvu/33

The advent of the artist and the door was almost simultaneous. I have always wondered if the one would have been as sinister without the other. Of course, the evil was in the door, but if the artist hadn't come along just then perhaps it might never have been released. I say that to comfort myself, but I know it isn't true. Evil is evil. It is a power and its strength is beyond mortal knowledge. Even without the artist there would have been horror. He only served to give it speedier expression.

But I am ahead of myself. The story goes back to my desire to have a carved door for my Elizabethan farm house.

I had rescued the cottage from demolition. It was just a frame when I first saw it, but the Tudor structure was there and two of the old tiny-paned glass windows had miraculously survived. The old beams were still in place and one linen fold panelled room which I visioned for my study. There was a gap, like a missing tooth, where the front door had been.

I bought the house and restored it tenderly into the lovely place it now is. I did it with care and devotion, but my entrance door was modern and an anachronism. I hated it, but I told myself someday I would find an old one in keeping with the rest of Little Tudor—the name I had bestowed on my home.

I moved in, made friends with my neighbors, particularly the ten-year-old daughter of the people who owned the Manor house of which the farm had originally been a part. Anne was old for