I am not the biggest fan of Lovecraft. I find him overwritten and histrionic... but I get the dim feeling that this Flagg story, first published in Weird Tales, produces in me what Lovecraft may well produce in all those who find his work disturbing. Flagg's version of weird fiction is, in comparison, stripped back and is all the more effective for it.

I will say, though, it took a stupidly long time for anyone here to think of a rope, and a stupidly short time for that rope to be lost. I am forced to conclude that some people simply deserve to be swallowed by spatial distortion.