McIlvaine's Star

Thaddeus McIlvaine is an eccentric amateur astronomer who has done the impossible: he's discovered a new star, a dark body moving through space toward Earth. More astonishing still, he believes it harbors intelligent life, and he will stop at nothing to establish contact. His friend Alexander Richardson watches with wry amusement as McIlvaine's obsession deepens, dismissing it as the harmless eccentricity of a gentleman scientist. What neither man knows is that they are characters in a horror story, and their ordinary lives are about to collide with something ancient and terrible. Derleth, the founder of Arkham House, crafts a tale of creeping dread where the real horror lies not in the dark star itself, but in the devastating gap between what the characters believe is happening and what is actually happening. It's a brief, unsettling meditation on cosmic insignificance, told with the kind of quiet malevolence that made Derleth master of the slow, creeping dread that lingers long after the final page.