The Strange High House in the Mist

On the highest cliff above Kingsport stands a small house that has no door facing the land, only a single window on the sheer sea side where no one could come or go. Thomas Olney, a thinker on holiday, climbs to it and is welcomed by its ageless occupant. Through that seaward window come visitors out of myth, the sea gods and older presences, and Olney passes a night among them.

He comes back down, but something of him does not. The townsfolk notice that the once restless man is now merely content, and wonder what was left behind in the house in the mist. It is one of Lovecraft's gentler, dreamlike pieces, closer to Dunsany than to dread. The Archive gives it height and air, a high lonely figure for the house on the cliff.